Review – Exit Music by Ian Rankin
Exit Music is Ian Rankin’s final Rebus novel, Inspector Rebus is about to retire. As readers will know, these novels were written in real time at the rate of a book a year, taking Rebus from 43 to 60 years of age and thus his compulsory retirement from the Edinburgh police force. In his final case, he investigates the murder of a dissident Russian poet. Read by Tom Cotcher, who reads with a perfectly pitched dour Scottish accent, Ian Rankin has saved the best for last.
Ian Rankin often brings world and local events into his novels. In The Naming of the Dead, for example, he set the novel during the G8 summit in Edinburgh. The plot of Exit Music has parallels with the murder in the United Kingdom of Alexander Litvinenko. At the time of the murder, a group of high powered Russian businessmen are in town investigating investment opportunities in Scotland with the Scottish Parliament and senior bankers. The politicians and bankers want the case closed quickly and quietly. Rebus suspects links between the delegation of Russians and the murder and is, as usual, rubbing up his superiors the wrong way. The plot is rich and full of twists and sub-plots. As usual, too, Rankin’s writing takes the reader from the light to the dark. One of the funny sub-plots running through the book is Rebus’s attempts to get hold of signed copies of the poet’s work which he left at his final public reading – to sell on eBay! Meanwhile, Rebus’s nemesis, “Big Ger” Cafferty who seems to be involved with the Russian delegation, has been attacked and hospitalised. Rebus is suspected.
This reviewer confesses to being a huge fan of the Rebus series, having read every one in order. Tom Cotcher’s performance adds much to Rebus’s swansong. Highly recommended.
