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 Customer Reviews
Going way off the boil., 04 Oct 2008
From the crass character set-up over lunch at the Ivy to the very unsatisfactory ending with a confusing subplot, this book did not hold my attention at all. Is it really from the author of 'Devices and Desires' and 'Original Sin'? Can this be the work of the author of 'The Lighthouse?' It reads like a (bad) parody of Agatha Christie. A great disappointment.
P.D. James - The Private Patient, 23 Sep 2008
I received proofs of the this, the new P.D. James, and the new Barbara Vine The Birthday Present, within days of one another, and decided it would be fun to read the two new novels by the two leading females of the British crime genre back-to-back, and seeing which I preferred. The answer, I'm afraid, is that I preferred neither. Both are disappointing efforts in their own way: the writing of both is exceptional, but both fall down at the hurdle of being a satisfying crime novel. As for the Vine, the only thing shocking about the new novel from a writer normally relied on for her shocks, is that there are none! And as for this P.D. James, she can normally be relied upon to provide a satisfying and surprising solution to her richly detailed mysteries, but here she just doesn't bother. She takes the obvious, what she's rather been suggesting all along (which, of course, one suspects cannot possibly be the real solution: she surely has a lovely trick up her sleeve for us), and runs with it.
That is the largest problem with The Private Patient. There are others. A good example is the almost messianic way she treats Dalgliesh (especially in reference to one silly weepy scene with subordinate Miskin), which is completely ridiculous almost from the start. Her characters just do not come across as real people when she starts giving them such devotions. I am always prepared to suspend a little belief with James (whose plummy characters have always come from the 60's unless they are lower on the class ladder, in which case they are generally hard-working, sloppy-talking stalwarts), but things here get a little silly: the characters talk with an eloquence not even found in some Booker novels, and their speech exhibits a clarity of thought that real human beings just do not spontaneously have, in my experience. Another criticism, which stems from the same root as the previous problem, is her silly political asides. A recent interview in some British newspaper revealed James to have some rather... disappointing, beliefs, and she takes the time to air them here occasionally, in brief splutters of wrinkly condescension. It's not exactly a massive problem, but it's just not necessary, adds nothing to the story, and just kept jerking me out of the story. Which, in all other respects, was absolutely, completely engaging and embroiling. The only other disappointing aspect was the fact that Rhoda Gradwyn seemed such an intensely interesting character, but I didn't really felt like we got under her skin at all, which was a shame. She remained a little too much of an enigma, when she was clearly the most interesting character in the book (I remember a similar problem cropping up in The Lighthouse, in fact.)
It says something that even though there were (and are) things about James' writing that I find intensely annoying, I loved the experience of reading The Private Patient. And the reason is that James' writing is simply superb. Intense detail illuminates rather than bores, and helps make the novels setting a constantly atmospheric one. The richness of the whole thing is something I was delighted to immerse myself in every time I picked the book up again. She (like Rendell as Vine) writes like no other crime writer, takes a sumptuous care over the business like no peer of hers seems to do. Everything is detailed, everything is fully realised. She constructs the starting points for her plots with a kind of love: the confluence of events, the things which bring these eclectic people to this isolated setting, this macrocosm of a locked-room mystery, be it set in a lighthouse, private clinic, nursing college or religious retreat. Her build-ups are always fascinating, how she brings everything together, sets up the suspects, motives, relationships, histories. In fact, they're almost my favourite part of the P.D. James experience!
So, my disappointments aside, I mostly enjoyed the experience, and so probably will all James fans. The solution is a damp affair, but the rest is not. It's a good James novel, just not a great one. Which is a much better state of affairs than none at all.
Not a detective story, 19 Sep 2008
Rather than follow the long-honored tradition in detective novels of providing a tight conclusion which explains all the mysteries, this book explicitly tells the reader "there was an arrogance in wanting always to know the truth". Most appalling. I will not read another P.D. James.
An Unusually Upbeat Ending, 19 Sep 2008
This latest Adam Dalgliesh mystery is up to P.D. James' usual standard. Once again there is a world filled with unhappy people from dysfunctional families. But some of those involved do live lives less bleak than often portrayed in her books, and the ending (more of an epilogue, placed half a year after the events in the rest of the book) is actually filled with a whole series of relatively happy couples.
The first murder victim is a freelance investigative journalist, and what bothers me a little is the depiction of her profession. First of all, I don't know if there are that many investigative reporters working freelance. But more important is the image of investigative journalism. To me this conjures up memories of Watergate, and hardworking reporters exposing polluting companies, corrupt politicians, and similar scandals. To the people in this book, in the world that P.D. James portrays, investigative journalists dig up dirt on little people, ruining their lives, just so they can earn a lot of money.
When you watch British mystery shows, the journalists are usually a flock of nuisances, irritating everyone else as they get in the way and ask less than helpful questions. So in this P.D. James seems to be faithful to a British media tradition. But I don't think it reflects the real world at all.
Other than that minor niggle, this is a very good read.
Too many political rants, too little detection, 18 Sep 2008
At the grand age of 88, 46 years after her debut with 'Cover Her Face', it seems P D James has written her last mystery featuring Adam Dalgliesh. 'The Private Patient', the 14th novel in the series, is heavy with a sense of finality from the outset. The Special Investigation Squad is about to be disbanded, Inspector Kate Miskin is awaiting promotion and Dalgliesh himself, preparing to marry his fiancee Emma, is considering retirement. Without giving anything away, the epilogue settles all the regular characters' fates in such a conclusive way, it strongly suggests the author has no intention of revisiting them. I shall certainly be sorry to see the series end, but on the evidence of this book I think the time is probably right.
'The Private Patient' has much to enjoy and admire in it. P D James arguably writes the best prose in the crime genre; here, as usual, the writing is intelligent, evocative, sometimes even beautiful. She is also exceptionally good at describing locations and capturing their atmospheres - the lonely manor house which is the focus of this investigation and the nearby circle of prehistoric stones complete with a grisly supernatural legend are especially memorable. She also hasn't lost her ability to unnerve the reader; the first murder in this book, with the howling wind outside and the murderer dressed in a surgical gown and mask, certainly raised the hairs on the back of my neck (and brought to mind a similarly sinister scene in the old British thriller 'Green For Danger').
Unfortunately, in other ways the book is not up to the author's usual standard. The mystery itself and its eventual solution are unsatisfactory and never quite convincing. There's a fair amount of repetition too, particularly when it comes to the private lives of the secondary characters, with some paragraphs about Kate and DS Benton-Smith lifted almost verbatim from James's previous novel 'The Lighthouse'. Most puzzling of all, there's a subplot introduced towards the end of the book about Emma's friends Clara and Annie which is totally unnecessary and as a result rather distasteful. It serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to bring the pace of the plot to a grinding halt for a few pages. It's almost as if this was intended to be part of the story but then James lost interest. It's both surprising and disappointing coming from an author whose plots are usually so meticulously planned and executed.
Another problem for me, which has been getting steadily worse over the last few Dalgliesh novels, is James's insistence on shoehorning her political views into the narrative. I fully accept that I could be accused of bias because I happen to disagree strongly with her on just about every subject, but it's definitely more than that. Many other crime writers do it, I know, and that's absolutely fine, as long as it's kept within the context of the story. What annoys me about the way it's done here is the crassness and clumsiness with which these views are dropped into the book. Characters suddenly break into an unnatural flood of right-wing rhetoric without any warning and with no obvious connection to events around them; if you must put Tory propaganda in your novel, at least do it with a little subtlety. And I really have to complain about the ignorance of some of the views expressed; I can only imagine P D James does her research browsing through past Daily Mail editorials. One particular comment, stating that 90% of comprehensive school pupils speak no English, is so breathtakingly stupid that I almost threw the book away in disgust. I fear Baroness James has been spending too much time hobnobbing with her fellow Tory peers; like them, she clearly has no idea what is going on in the world outside her own smug, narrow upper-middle-class bubble.
Don't get me wrong, there is still enjoyment to be had from this book, but it is undoubtedly a long way from her best work. If this really is the final Dalgliesh novel, it's a great pity the series couldn't have ended on a higher note.
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Doors Open
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*Amazon: £9.20
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Customer Reviews
Going way off the boil., 04 Oct 2008
From the crass character set-up over lunch at the Ivy to the very unsatisfactory ending with a confusing subplot, this book did not hold my attention at all. Is it really from the author of 'Devices and Desires' and 'Original Sin'? Can this be the work of the author of 'The Lighthouse?' It reads like a (bad) parody of Agatha Christie. A great disappointment.
P.D. James - The Private Patient, 23 Sep 2008
I received proofs of the this, the new P.D. James, and the new Barbara Vine The Birthday Present, within days of one another, and decided it would be fun to read the two new novels by the two leading females of the British crime genre back-to-back, and seeing which I preferred. The answer, I'm afraid, is that I preferred neither. Both are disappointing efforts in their own way: the writing of both is exceptional, but both fall down at the hurdle of being a satisfying crime novel. As for the Vine, the only thing shocking about the new novel from a writer normally relied on for her shocks, is that there are none! And as for this P.D. James, she can normally be relied upon to provide a satisfying and surprising solution to her richly detailed mysteries, but here she just doesn't bother. She takes the obvious, what she's rather been suggesting all along (which, of course, one suspects cannot possibly be the real solution: she surely has a lovely trick up her sleeve for us), and runs with it.
That is the largest problem with The Private Patient. There are others. A good example is the almost messianic way she treats Dalgliesh (especially in reference to one silly weepy scene with subordinate Miskin), which is completely ridiculous almost from the start. Her characters just do not come across as real people when she starts giving them such devotions. I am always prepared to suspend a little belief with James (whose plummy characters have always come from the 60's unless they are lower on the class ladder, in which case they are generally hard-working, sloppy-talking stalwarts), but things here get a little silly: the characters talk with an eloquence not even found in some Booker novels, and their speech exhibits a clarity of thought that real human beings just do not spontaneously have, in my experience. Another criticism, which stems from the same root as the previous problem, is her silly political asides. A recent interview in some British newspaper revealed James to have some rather... disappointing, beliefs, and she takes the time to air them here occasionally, in brief splutters of wrinkly condescension. It's not exactly a massive problem, but it's just not necessary, adds nothing to the story, and just kept jerking me out of the story. Which, in all other respects, was absolutely, completely engaging and embroiling. The only other disappointing aspect was the fact that Rhoda Gradwyn seemed such an intensely interesting character, but I didn't really felt like we got under her skin at all, which was a shame. She remained a little too much of an enigma, when she was clearly the most interesting character in the book (I remember a similar problem cropping up in The Lighthouse, in fact.)
It says something that even though there were (and are) things about James' writing that I find intensely annoying, I loved the experience of reading The Private Patient. And the reason is that James' writing is simply superb. Intense detail illuminates rather than bores, and helps make the novels setting a constantly atmospheric one. The richness of the whole thing is something I was delighted to immerse myself in every time I picked the book up again. She (like Rendell as Vine) writes like no other crime writer, takes a sumptuous care over the business like no peer of hers seems to do. Everything is detailed, everything is fully realised. She constructs the starting points for her plots with a kind of love: the confluence of events, the things which bring these eclectic people to this isolated setting, this macrocosm of a locked-room mystery, be it set in a lighthouse, private clinic, nursing college or religious retreat. Her build-ups are always fascinating, how she brings everything together, sets up the suspects, motives, relationships, histories. In fact, they're almost my favourite part of the P.D. James experience!
So, my disappointments aside, I mostly enjoyed the experience, and so probably will all James fans. The solution is a damp affair, but the rest is not. It's a good James novel, just not a great one. Which is a much better state of affairs than none at all.
Not a detective story, 19 Sep 2008
Rather than follow the long-honored tradition in detective novels of providing a tight conclusion which explains all the mysteries, this book explicitly tells the reader "there was an arrogance in wanting always to know the truth". Most appalling. I will not read another P.D. James.
An Unusually Upbeat Ending, 19 Sep 2008
This latest Adam Dalgliesh mystery is up to P.D. James' usual standard. Once again there is a world filled with unhappy people from dysfunctional families. But some of those involved do live lives less bleak than often portrayed in her books, and the ending (more of an epilogue, placed half a year after the events in the rest of the book) is actually filled with a whole series of relatively happy couples.
The first murder victim is a freelance investigative journalist, and what bothers me a little is the depiction of her profession. First of all, I don't know if there are that many investigative reporters working freelance. But more important is the image of investigative journalism. To me this conjures up memories of Watergate, and hardworking reporters exposing polluting companies, corrupt politicians, and similar scandals. To the people in this book, in the world that P.D. James portrays, investigative journalists dig up dirt on little people, ruining their lives, just so they can earn a lot of money.
When you watch British mystery shows, the journalists are usually a flock of nuisances, irritating everyone else as they get in the way and ask less than helpful questions. So in this P.D. James seems to be faithful to a British media tradition. But I don't think it reflects the real world at all.
Other than that minor niggle, this is a very good read.
Too many political rants, too little detection, 18 Sep 2008
At the grand age of 88, 46 years after her debut with 'Cover Her Face', it seems P D James has written her last mystery featuring Adam Dalgliesh. 'The Private Patient', the 14th novel in the series, is heavy with a sense of finality from the outset. The Special Investigation Squad is about to be disbanded, Inspector Kate Miskin is awaiting promotion and Dalgliesh himself, preparing to marry his fiancee Emma, is considering retirement. Without giving anything away, the epilogue settles all the regular characters' fates in such a conclusive way, it strongly suggests the author has no intention of revisiting them. I shall certainly be sorry to see the series end, but on the evidence of this book I think the time is probably right.
'The Private Patient' has much to enjoy and admire in it. P D James arguably writes the best prose in the crime genre; here, as usual, the writing is intelligent, evocative, sometimes even beautiful. She is also exceptionally good at describing locations and capturing their atmospheres - the lonely manor house which is the focus of this investigation and the nearby circle of prehistoric stones complete with a grisly supernatural legend are especially memorable. She also hasn't lost her ability to unnerve the reader; the first murder in this book, with the howling wind outside and the murderer dressed in a surgical gown and mask, certainly raised the hairs on the back of my neck (and brought to mind a similarly sinister scene in the old British thriller 'Green For Danger').
Unfortunately, in other ways the book is not up to the author's usual standard. The mystery itself and its eventual solution are unsatisfactory and never quite convincing. There's a fair amount of repetition too, particularly when it comes to the private lives of the secondary characters, with some paragraphs about Kate and DS Benton-Smith lifted almost verbatim from James's previous novel 'The Lighthouse'. Most puzzling of all, there's a subplot introduced towards the end of the book about Emma's friends Clara and Annie which is totally unnecessary and as a result rather distasteful. It serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to bring the pace of the plot to a grinding halt for a few pages. It's almost as if this was intended to be part of the story but then James lost interest. It's both surprising and disappointing coming from an author whose plots are usually so meticulously planned and executed.
Another problem for me, which has been getting steadily worse over the last few Dalgliesh novels, is James's insistence on shoehorning her political views into the narrative. I fully accept that I could be accused of bias because I happen to disagree strongly with her on just about every subject, but it's definitely more than that. Many other crime writers do it, I know, and that's absolutely fine, as long as it's kept within the context of the story. What annoys me about the way it's done here is the crassness and clumsiness with which these views are dropped into the book. Characters suddenly break into an unnatural flood of right-wing rhetoric without any warning and with no obvious connection to events around them; if you must put Tory propaganda in your novel, at least do it with a little subtlety. And I really have to complain about the ignorance of some of the views expressed; I can only imagine P D James does her research browsing through past Daily Mail editorials. One particular comment, stating that 90% of comprehensive school pupils speak no English, is so breathtakingly stupid that I almost threw the book away in disgust. I fear Baroness James has been spending too much time hobnobbing with her fellow Tory peers; like them, she clearly has no idea what is going on in the world outside her own smug, narrow upper-middle-class bubble.
Don't get me wrong, there is still enjoyment to be had from this book, but it is undoubtedly a long way from her best work. If this really is the final Dalgliesh novel, it's a great pity the series couldn't have ended on a higher note.
Bit of a strange mixture, 30 Sep 2008
"Bit quiet since you-know-who retired" says one copper half way through, so let's get 'him' out of the way! This book started strangely - by page 50 or so, I was convinced that Rankin, a supremely accomplished writer, was having me on. It's a spoof! Lavender Hill Mob meets Ocean's 11. Surely these guys can't be serious?!! In fact I came close to abandoning it BUT then something happened. Not just one event or a certain page but something a bit more gradual. Rankin was being serious after all. Yes, he's still commenting on social divides in Edinburgh, but on other things as well. His take on the aftermath of greed reminds me of the 'Pardoner's Tale' and his treatment of guilt Poe's story 'The Tell-Tale Heart' which interestingly is mentioned. After half way, I was hooked. Pretty good ending too!!!! I think he'll leave this one as a stand-alone whilst he decides his writing future. I really don't see any character here surviving in any major way into the future as none of them are properly developed. May be wrong!! Good read overall but can't give it 5 stars.
A Break From The Day Job (3.5* Stars), 28 Sep 2008
You're a celebrated crime author and you've just retired your most famous character - DI John Rebus, as if you didn't know - so what do you do next? Answer, you write an old-fashioned heist caper.
You'll have read the plot synopsis so I'll not summarise it again, I'll simply confine myself to making a few general points about the book.
First of all, this originally ran as a serial in the same publication that first printed Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch-lite `The Overlook' before it was published as a novel last year. I don't know if Ian has padded out `Doors Open' a bit before publishing it, but if I'm being honest, it doesn't particularly feel as if it's longer than it should be.
I found `Doors Open' to be a satisfying read, even if it doesn't come close to approaching the quality of a large number of the best of the superb Rebus novels. For anyone else it would be good, but Rankin has set his own standards so high, that you're perhaps looking for a bit more. I personally suspect that he wrote this as a bit of light relief after creating the increasingly complex plots of the `you know who' series for the past twenty years. Pretty soon I hope he'll be embarking on a major new series, perhaps one starring Siobhan Clarke.
His policeman here, DI Ransome could not be less like John Rebus if he tried. For a start, he doesn't rush bull-headed into things with no care for insulting his betters - or anyone, else for that matter. Ransome has a facility for diplomacy when among his peers (his counterpart from another station is the one officially investigating the art theft) and has subtle plans for his own advancement. He's no less effective than Rebus, but like I say, his methods are totally different. However, in local Edinburgh gangster Chib Calloway he's created a baddie cut from the same cloth, or perhaps that should be, hewn from the same block of granite, as 'Big Ger' Cafferty from the Rebus novels.
There are a few times in this novel where Rankin has his characters spit things out... as in `Blah, blah, blah', he spat. This despite the fact that the sentences often contain no sibilants. This is a bit lazy, and proves to me that Ian himself regards this as no more than a frippery; a break from the real day job. Having said that, it's still a professional effort and contains a good number of decent twists.
In summary, this is an effective and efficient little thriller, and it's Ian Rankin writing in a much lighter vein, but it's no less enjoyable for that. If I'm going to be picky, there are writers around like Christopher Brookmyre who, frankly, do this kind of thing much better. Still it's a nice enough stab at the sub-genre, and it's never less than entertaining. But it isn't major league Rankin and anyone approaching it with that expectation is going to be disappointed.
Phoning it in, 27 Sep 2008
I've enjoyed reading Rankin so much over the years that it almost feels like heresy to give his latest a ho-hum review.
"Doors Open" makes a fair stab at finding a post-Rebus voice, but I think Rankin should have waited longer. The plot starts strong, as do the characters; but while the plot becomes more complex and more improbable, the characters become more two-dimensional (and more improbable). Perhaps this is because there are too many characters, all struggling for some kind of primacy, which results in a rather he-said, she-said narrative style.
I suspect the author himself lost interest quite early on. How else to explain some atypically slapdash writing? The arch-villain, for example, gives a grizzled shake of the head. A "grizzled shake"? And on the following page the same character "barks" not just once, which would have been fine, but twice. Are we in a Biggles novel here, or The Incredible Journey? Another character feels "little compunction to switch on" his mobile phone, where "compulsion" would make more sense. And there is even an appearance by that splendid old orthodontal accessory the "fine toothcomb".
I'm sorry to niggle. From any other author, this book would have seemed a decent effort - but the large-print name "Ian Rankin" on the jacket raises expectations which the book doesn't live up to.
A strong start to his post-Rebus career, 22 Sep 2008
Ian Rankin is at something of a turning point in his writing career. Although he wrote other novels early on, he is mainly known for the Inspector Rebus series which has enjoyed enormous critical and popular success in recent years. Now Rebus is taking a break, at least temporarily, and Rankin has just released his first stand-alone novel since the Inspector retired. After such a popular series has ended, it can be difficult for the author to win over former readers with an entirely new book, but 'Doors Open' suggests that Ian Rankin still has what it takes to entertain us even without his most famous creation.
It seems he has intentionally set out to create something as different as possible from his previous work. 'Doors Open' is, for want of a better word, a 'caper.' The tone is lighter than the Rebus novels (although things take a serious turn towards the end), and the book reminded me of a modern Scottish version of the classic film 'The League Of Gentlemen'. Mike Mackenzie has made a fortune from computer software at an early age; now he's bored and looking for a bit of adventure. When his friend Robert Gissing suggests 'liberating' a series of paintings from the National Gallery storage vaults in Edinburgh, it's just what he's been looking for. With his other pal Allan and a student forger in tow, Mike approaches gangland boss Chib Calloway (who was at school with Mike) to aid them in their plan. Needless to say, some major complications ensue - greedy partners, an obsessed policeman out to nail Calloway and a monstrous Scandinavian debt-collector called Hate are drawn in to the situation and Mike and friends quickly find themselves completely out of their depth and in serious danger from both the police and the criminal underworld.
At first I was unsure about the book; it seemed to me rather unconvincing the way that Mike and Allan almost immediately fell in with Gissing's plan despite being normal, law-abiding citizens previously. However, as the day of the heist approaches that niggle was swiftly forgotten. Despite the change in subject and tone, Rankin has lost none of his ability to grip the reader. He also knows how to create likeable but fallible characters - readers will be willing Mike and his cohorts to succeed in their plan and get away with it. One of the author's favourite themes - the duality of the public and private sides of Edinburgh - is once again to the fore, complete with allusions to Jekyll and Hyde. In fact, there is enough that's familiar in this book to reassure Rebus devotees, but the fresh approach keeps it from seeming stale or repetitive.
I must admit I hope Ian Rankin will write more Rebus books at some future date, but I still thoroughly enjoyed 'Doors Open'. The end of the novel offers the possibility that we may see some of the characters again, and I would definitely welcome their return.
The perfect heist, 20 Sep 2008
Rankin's first novel since the retirement of Rebus a Oceans Eleven set in Edinburgh so more Firth of Forth five
It's a fairly quick read with the central characters well written
Dot.com millionaire businessman and art lover Mike Mackenzie is seduced into a scheme to commit a perfect crime along with a professor of art and his banker friend it seems like all talk until a chance encounter with a local gangster and ex school mate of Mike's ( a character that is very similar to a certain big ger mccafferty)
The book is really two halfs the first introducing the characters and taking us up to the heist itself, the second takes a darker turn as greed and mistrust and guilt start to consume the individuals with the police closing in who will hold their nerve
When I bought this I wondered if this as going to be the new ian rankin series as one door closes on Rebus another opens but no it's clear that this is just a one off novel
It's certainly entertaining enough with some good dialogue and a great set of characters it does though feel like a long short story rather than a full novel
That said it shows that Ian Rankin is a great storyteller
There's even a subtle reference to Rebus in the book
Definately worth a read and be interesting to see where Rankin takes us next I'm still buying
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No Time For Goodbye
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*Amazon: £1.57
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Customer Reviews
Going way off the boil., 04 Oct 2008
From the crass character set-up over lunch at the Ivy to the very unsatisfactory ending with a confusing subplot, this book did not hold my attention at all. Is it really from the author of 'Devices and Desires' and 'Original Sin'? Can this be the work of the author of 'The Lighthouse?' It reads like a (bad) parody of Agatha Christie. A great disappointment.
P.D. James - The Private Patient, 23 Sep 2008
I received proofs of the this, the new P.D. James, and the new Barbara Vine The Birthday Present, within days of one another, and decided it would be fun to read the two new novels by the two leading females of the British crime genre back-to-back, and seeing which I preferred. The answer, I'm afraid, is that I preferred neither. Both are disappointing efforts in their own way: the writing of both is exceptional, but both fall down at the hurdle of being a satisfying crime novel. As for the Vine, the only thing shocking about the new novel from a writer normally relied on for her shocks, is that there are none! And as for this P.D. James, she can normally be relied upon to provide a satisfying and surprising solution to her richly detailed mysteries, but here she just doesn't bother. She takes the obvious, what she's rather been suggesting all along (which, of course, one suspects cannot possibly be the real solution: she surely has a lovely trick up her sleeve for us), and runs with it.
That is the largest problem with The Private Patient. There are others. A good example is the almost messianic way she treats Dalgliesh (especially in reference to one silly weepy scene with subordinate Miskin), which is completely ridiculous almost from the start. Her characters just do not come across as real people when she starts giving them such devotions. I am always prepared to suspend a little belief with James (whose plummy characters have always come from the 60's unless they are lower on the class ladder, in which case they are generally hard-working, sloppy-talking stalwarts), but things here get a little silly: the characters talk with an eloquence not even found in some Booker novels, and their speech exhibits a clarity of thought that real human beings just do not spontaneously have, in my experience. Another criticism, which stems from the same root as the previous problem, is her silly political asides. A recent interview in some British newspaper revealed James to have some rather... disappointing, beliefs, and she takes the time to air them here occasionally, in brief splutters of wrinkly condescension. It's not exactly a massive problem, but it's just not necessary, adds nothing to the story, and just kept jerking me out of the story. Which, in all other respects, was absolutely, completely engaging and embroiling. The only other disappointing aspect was the fact that Rhoda Gradwyn seemed such an intensely interesting character, but I didn't really felt like we got under her skin at all, which was a shame. She remained a little too much of an enigma, when she was clearly the most interesting character in the book (I remember a similar problem cropping up in The Lighthouse, in fact.)
It says something that even though there were (and are) things about James' writing that I find intensely annoying, I loved the experience of reading The Private Patient. And the reason is that James' writing is simply superb. Intense detail illuminates rather than bores, and helps make the novels setting a constantly atmospheric one. The richness of the whole thing is something I was delighted to immerse myself in every time I picked the book up again. She (like Rendell as Vine) writes like no other crime writer, takes a sumptuous care over the business like no peer of hers seems to do. Everything is detailed, everything is fully realised. She constructs the starting points for her plots with a kind of love: the confluence of events, the things which bring these eclectic people to this isolated setting, this macrocosm of a locked-room mystery, be it set in a lighthouse, private clinic, nursing college or religious retreat. Her build-ups are always fascinating, how she brings everything together, sets up the suspects, motives, relationships, histories. In fact, they're almost my favourite part of the P.D. James experience!
So, my disappointments aside, I mostly enjoyed the experience, and so probably will all James fans. The solution is a damp affair, but the rest is not. It's a good James novel, just not a great one. Which is a much better state of affairs than none at all.
Not a detective story, 19 Sep 2008
Rather than follow the long-honored tradition in detective novels of providing a tight conclusion which explains all the mysteries, this book explicitly tells the reader "there was an arrogance in wanting always to know the truth". Most appalling. I will not read another P.D. James.
An Unusually Upbeat Ending, 19 Sep 2008
This latest Adam Dalgliesh mystery is up to P.D. James' usual standard. Once again there is a world filled with unhappy people from dysfunctional families. But some of those involved do live lives less bleak than often portrayed in her books, and the ending (more of an epilogue, placed half a year after the events in the rest of the book) is actually filled with a whole series of relatively happy couples.
The first murder victim is a freelance investigative journalist, and what bothers me a little is the depiction of her profession. First of all, I don't know if there are that many investigative reporters working freelance. But more important is the image of investigative journalism. To me this conjures up memories of Watergate, and hardworking reporters exposing polluting companies, corrupt politicians, and similar scandals. To the people in this book, in the world that P.D. James portrays, investigative journalists dig up dirt on little people, ruining their lives, just so they can earn a lot of money.
When you watch British mystery shows, the journalists are usually a flock of nuisances, irritating everyone else as they get in the way and ask less than helpful questions. So in this P.D. James seems to be faithful to a British media tradition. But I don't think it reflects the real world at all.
Other than that minor niggle, this is a very good read.
Too many political rants, too little detection, 18 Sep 2008
At the grand age of 88, 46 years after her debut with 'Cover Her Face', it seems P D James has written her last mystery featuring Adam Dalgliesh. 'The Private Patient', the 14th novel in the series, is heavy with a sense of finality from the outset. The Special Investigation Squad is about to be disbanded, Inspector Kate Miskin is awaiting promotion and Dalgliesh himself, preparing to marry his fiancee Emma, is considering retirement. Without giving anything away, the epilogue settles all the regular characters' fates in such a conclusive way, it strongly suggests the author has no intention of revisiting them. I shall certainly be sorry to see the series end, but on the evidence of this book I think the time is probably right.
'The Private Patient' has much to enjoy and admire in it. P D James arguably writes the best prose in the crime genre; here, as usual, the writing is intelligent, evocative, sometimes even beautiful. She is also exceptionally good at describing locations and capturing their atmospheres - the lonely manor house which is the focus of this investigation and the nearby circle of prehistoric stones complete with a grisly supernatural legend are especially memorable. She also hasn't lost her ability to unnerve the reader; the first murder in this book, with the howling wind outside and the murderer dressed in a surgical gown and mask, certainly raised the hairs on the back of my neck (and brought to mind a similarly sinister scene in the old British thriller 'Green For Danger').
Unfortunately, in other ways the book is not up to the author's usual standard. The mystery itself and its eventual solution are unsatisfactory and never quite convincing. There's a fair amount of repetition too, particularly when it comes to the private lives of the secondary characters, with some paragraphs about Kate and DS Benton-Smith lifted almost verbatim from James's previous novel 'The Lighthouse'. Most puzzling of all, there's a subplot introduced towards the end of the book about Emma's friends Clara and Annie which is totally unnecessary and as a result rather distasteful. It serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to bring the pace of the plot to a grinding halt for a few pages. It's almost as if this was intended to be part of the story but then James lost interest. It's both surprising and disappointing coming from an author whose plots are usually so meticulously planned and executed.
Another problem for me, which has been getting steadily worse over the last few Dalgliesh novels, is James's insistence on shoehorning her political views into the narrative. I fully accept that I could be accused of bias because I happen to disagree strongly with her on just about every subject, but it's definitely more than that. Many other crime writers do it, I know, and that's absolutely fine, as long as it's kept within the context of the story. What annoys me about the way it's done here is the crassness and clumsiness with which these views are dropped into the book. Characters suddenly break into an unnatural flood of right-wing rhetoric without any warning and with no obvious connection to events around them; if you must put Tory propaganda in your novel, at least do it with a little subtlety. And I really have to complain about the ignorance of some of the views expressed; I can only imagine P D James does her research browsing through past Daily Mail editorials. One particular comment, stating that 90% of comprehensive school pupils speak no English, is so breathtakingly stupid that I almost threw the book away in disgust. I fear Baroness James has been spending too much time hobnobbing with her fellow Tory peers; like them, she clearly has no idea what is going on in the world outside her own smug, narrow upper-middle-class bubble.
Don't get me wrong, there is still enjoyment to be had from this book, but it is undoubtedly a long way from her best work. If this really is the final Dalgliesh novel, it's a great pity the series couldn't have ended on a higher note.
Bit of a strange mixture, 30 Sep 2008
"Bit quiet since you-know-who retired" says one copper half way through, so let's get 'him' out of the way! This book started strangely - by page 50 or so, I was convinced that Rankin, a supremely accomplished writer, was having me on. It's a spoof! Lavender Hill Mob meets Ocean's 11. Surely these guys can't be serious?!! In fact I came close to abandoning it BUT then something happened. Not just one event or a certain page but something a bit more gradual. Rankin was being serious after all. Yes, he's still commenting on social divides in Edinburgh, but on other things as well. His take on the aftermath of greed reminds me of the 'Pardoner's Tale' and his treatment of guilt Poe's story 'The Tell-Tale Heart' which interestingly is mentioned. After half way, I was hooked. Pretty good ending too!!!! I think he'll leave this one as a stand-alone whilst he decides his writing future. I really don't see any character here surviving in any major way into the future as none of them are properly developed. May be wrong!! Good read overall but can't give it 5 stars.
A Break From The Day Job (3.5* Stars), 28 Sep 2008
You're a celebrated crime author and you've just retired your most famous character - DI John Rebus, as if you didn't know - so what do you do next? Answer, you write an old-fashioned heist caper.
You'll have read the plot synopsis so I'll not summarise it again, I'll simply confine myself to making a few general points about the book.
First of all, this originally ran as a serial in the same publication that first printed Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch-lite `The Overlook' before it was published as a novel last year. I don't know if Ian has padded out `Doors Open' a bit before publishing it, but if I'm being honest, it doesn't particularly feel as if it's longer than it should be.
I found `Doors Open' to be a satisfying read, even if it doesn't come close to approaching the quality of a large number of the best of the superb Rebus novels. For anyone else it would be good, but Rankin has set his own standards so high, that you're perhaps looking for a bit more. I personally suspect that he wrote this as a bit of light relief after creating the increasingly complex plots of the `you know who' series for the past twenty years. Pretty soon I hope he'll be embarking on a major new series, perhaps one starring Siobhan Clarke.
His policeman here, DI Ransome could not be less like John Rebus if he tried. For a start, he doesn't rush bull-headed into things with no care for insulting his betters - or anyone, else for that matter. Ransome has a facility for diplomacy when among his peers (his counterpart from another station is the one officially investigating the art theft) and has subtle plans for his own advancement. He's no less effective than Rebus, but like I say, his methods are totally different. However, in local Edinburgh gangster Chib Calloway he's created a baddie cut from the same cloth, or perhaps that should be, hewn from the same block of granite, as 'Big Ger' Cafferty from the Rebus novels.
There are a few times in this novel where Rankin has his characters spit things out... as in `Blah, blah, blah', he spat. This despite the fact that the sentences often contain no sibilants. This is a bit lazy, and proves to me that Ian himself regards this as no more than a frippery; a break from the real day job. Having said that, it's still a professional effort and contains a good number of decent twists.
In summary, this is an effective and efficient little thriller, and it's Ian Rankin writing in a much lighter vein, but it's no less enjoyable for that. If I'm going to be picky, there are writers around like Christopher Brookmyre who, frankly, do this kind of thing much better. Still it's a nice enough stab at the sub-genre, and it's never less than entertaining. But it isn't major league Rankin and anyone approaching it with that expectation is going to be disappointed.
Phoning it in, 27 Sep 2008
I've enjoyed reading Rankin so much over the years that it almost feels like heresy to give his latest a ho-hum review.
"Doors Open" makes a fair stab at finding a post-Rebus voice, but I think Rankin should have waited longer. The plot starts strong, as do the characters; but while the plot becomes more complex and more improbable, the characters become more two-dimensional (and more improbable). Perhaps this is because there are too many characters, all struggling for some kind of primacy, which results in a rather he-said, she-said narrative style.
I suspect the author himself lost interest quite early on. How else to explain some atypically slapdash writing? The arch-villain, for example, gives a grizzled shake of the head. A "grizzled shake"? And on the following page the same character "barks" not just once, which would have been fine, but twice. Are we in a Biggles novel here, or The Incredible Journey? Another character feels "little compunction to switch on" his mobile phone, where "compulsion" would make more sense. And there is even an appearance by that splendid old orthodontal accessory the "fine toothcomb".
I'm sorry to niggle. From any other author, this book would have seemed a decent effort - but the large-print name "Ian Rankin" on the jacket raises expectations which the book doesn't live up to.
A strong start to his post-Rebus career, 22 Sep 2008
Ian Rankin is at something of a turning point in his writing career. Although he wrote other novels early on, he is mainly known for the Inspector Rebus series which has enjoyed enormous critical and popular success in recent years. Now Rebus is taking a break, at least temporarily, and Rankin has just released his first stand-alone novel since the Inspector retired. After such a popular series has ended, it can be difficult for the author to win over former readers with an entirely new book, but 'Doors Open' suggests that Ian Rankin still has what it takes to entertain us even without his most famous creation.
It seems he has intentionally set out to create something as different as possible from his previous work. 'Doors Open' is, for want of a better word, a 'caper.' The tone is lighter than the Rebus novels (although things take a serious turn towards the end), and the book reminded me of a modern Scottish version of the classic film 'The League Of Gentlemen'. Mike Mackenzie has made a fortune from computer software at an early age; now he's bored and looking for a bit of adventure. When his friend Robert Gissing suggests 'liberating' a series of paintings from the National Gallery storage vaults in Edinburgh, it's just what he's been looking for. With his other pal Allan and a student forger in tow, Mike approaches gangland boss Chib Calloway (who was at school with Mike) to aid them in their plan. Needless to say, some major complications ensue - greedy partners, an obsessed policeman out to nail Calloway and a monstrous Scandinavian debt-collector called Hate are drawn in to the situation and Mike and friends quickly find themselves completely out of their depth and in serious danger from both the police and the criminal underworld.
At first I was unsure about the book; it seemed to me rather unconvincing the way that Mike and Allan almost immediately fell in with Gissing's plan despite being normal, law-abiding citizens previously. However, as the day of the heist approaches that niggle was swiftly forgotten. Despite the change in subject and tone, Rankin has lost none of his ability to grip the reader. He also knows how to create likeable but fallible characters - readers will be willing Mike and his cohorts to succeed in their plan and get away with it. One of the author's favourite themes - the duality of the public and private sides of Edinburgh - is once again to the fore, complete with allusions to Jekyll and Hyde. In fact, there is enough that's familiar in this book to reassure Rebus devotees, but the fresh approach keeps it from seeming stale or repetitive.
I must admit I hope Ian Rankin will write more Rebus books at some future date, but I still thoroughly enjoyed 'Doors Open'. The end of the novel offers the possibility that we may see some of the characters again, and I would definitely welcome their return.
The perfect heist, 20 Sep 2008
Rankin's first novel since the retirement of Rebus a Oceans Eleven set in Edinburgh so more Firth of Forth five
It's a fairly quick read with the central characters well written
Dot.com millionaire businessman and art lover Mike Mackenzie is seduced into a scheme to commit a perfect crime along with a professor of art and his banker friend it seems like all talk until a chance encounter with a local gangster and ex school mate of Mike's ( a character that is very similar to a certain big ger mccafferty)
The book is really two halfs the first introducing the characters and taking us up to the heist itself, the second takes a darker turn as greed and mistrust and guilt start to consume the individuals with the police closing in who will hold their nerve
When I bought this I wondered if this as going to be the new ian rankin series as one door closes on Rebus another opens but no it's clear that this is just a one off novel
It's certainly entertaining enough with some good dialogue and a great set of characters it does though feel like a long short story rather than a full novel
That said it shows that Ian Rankin is a great storyteller
There's even a subtle reference to Rebus in the book
Definately worth a read and be interesting to see where Rankin takes us next I'm still buying
Flies off the pages..., 05 Oct 2008
I really enjoyed this novel. A fascinating concept - that a teenage girl wakes up one morning to find her entire family has gone. Just disappeared without a trace...And then she has to wait 25 years and to the making of a documentary about her life to find out the truth.
Fast paced, with excellent three-dimensional characters, I raced through this book in no time - it is truly unputdownable! I've heard a lot said that it's 'far-fetched' and has 'unecessary twists' and though this may be true, it is still great story-telling. I do feel that it's believable enough to hold your interest and the outcome, though given away a little easily, is worth the wait.
Highly recommended...
No time to do anything except making time to read this book!, 30 Sep 2008
Fans of Harlen Coben will love this book. Its very entertaining and will not disappoint. It has everything especially the one thing i always look for and thats humour. Like Coben its very family orientated and children/parents relationships are very important.
Nice start, shame about the end, 29 Sep 2008
Great start to the story, draws you in, leads to great expectations...then lets you down with a very predictable and disappointing ending ..which you think .. this can't be! The characters are initially good but are increasingly unbelievable and dissolve into what seems to be the author trying to tie everything up to the conclusion rather than coming up with an exciting ending. Pity it wasn't a better ending, which would have led to a 5 star book.
Great book...BUT.., 29 Sep 2008
I enjoyed this book throughout: great pace, characterization dealt with deftly (mostly through dialogue and interaction, which gave you a feel for them beyond background and description), lots of twists and changes and nail-biting moments... and a GREAT central thread. You just have to know why a whole family has disappeared. However....
**PLOT SPOILER** The plot jumps forward twenty-five years from that fateful day and a private investigator is called in some months down the line. Within forty-eight hours he's discovered that there's no social security or tax records for the girl's father. Now, the thing is many PI's are retired or ex-policemen. These would have been the first two things the police would have checked (and discovered) twenty-five years back. I think this is a major faux pas (or 'fox pass' as it's termed in the book) that LB should have picked up on.
Possibly it's just me from dealing regularly with the police and court systems for my work, or having read more Coben, Grisham, Lehane and Pelecanos than is perhaps healthy. But if you want to drop me a line before penning your next one, LB, I can make sure you don't make a similar foot fault.
But, apart from that, as I say, very, very good (would have been a decided 5 stars apart from that). Harlan has got some serious competition for once.
Keeps you transfixed, 28 Sep 2008
Well, I can see from the range of reviews for this book that it doesn't score highly with those seeking a literary masterpiece, but does with those who enjoy a fast paced thriller. I enjoy both sorts of books, but I suppose it also depends on how you define a literary masterpeice. In my eyes, this is almost it- fast paced, likable main characters and a plot full of twists and turns to the very end.
Plot has been covered by other reviewers, but I have to say that I found the method of using Cynthia's husband to be a good one. This offered an insight into events which was perhaps more interesting. Overall, I enjoyed this novel greatly and was sad to finally finish it, although on the other hand, I couldn't put it down. I am very much looking forward to the author's next novel.
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Customer Reviews
Going way off the boil., 04 Oct 2008
From the crass character set-up over lunch at the Ivy to the very unsatisfactory ending with a confusing subplot, this book did not hold my attention at all. Is it really from the author of 'Devices and Desires' and 'Original Sin'? Can this be the work of the author of 'The Lighthouse?' It reads like a (bad) parody of Agatha Christie. A great disappointment.
P.D. James - The Private Patient, 23 Sep 2008
I received proofs of the this, the new P.D. James, and the new Barbara Vine The Birthday Present, within days of one another, and decided it would be fun to read the two new novels by the two leading females of the British crime genre back-to-back, and seeing which I preferred. The answer, I'm afraid, is that I preferred neither. Both are disappointing efforts in their own way: the writing of both is exceptional, but both fall down at the hurdle of being a satisfying crime novel. As for the Vine, the only thing shocking about the new novel from a writer normally relied on for her shocks, is that there are none! And as for this P.D. James, she can normally be relied upon to provide a satisfying and surprising solution to her richly detailed mysteries, but here she just doesn't bother. She takes the obvious, what she's rather been suggesting all along (which, of course, one suspects cannot possibly be the real solution: she surely has a lovely trick up her sleeve for us), and runs with it.
That is the largest problem with The Private Patient. There are others. A good example is the almost messianic way she treats Dalgliesh (especially in reference to one silly weepy scene with subordinate Miskin), which is completely ridiculous almost from the start. Her characters just do not come across as real people when she starts giving them such devotions. I am always prepared to suspend a little belief with James (whose plummy characters have always come from the 60's unless they are lower on the class ladder, in which case they are generally hard-working, sloppy-talking stalwarts), but things here get a little silly: the characters talk with an eloquence not even found in some Booker novels, and their speech exhibits a clarity of thought that real human beings just do not spontaneously have, in my experience. Another criticism, which stems from the same root as the previous problem, is her silly political asides. A recent interview in some British newspaper revealed James to have some rather... disappointing, beliefs, and she takes the time to air them here occasionally, in brief splutters of wrinkly condescension. It's not exactly a massive problem, but it's just not necessary, adds nothing to the story, and just kept jerking me out of the story. Which, in all other respects, was absolutely, completely engaging and embroiling. The only other disappointing aspect was the fact that Rhoda Gradwyn seemed such an intensely interesting character, but I didn't really felt like we got under her skin at all, which was a shame. She remained a little too much of an enigma, when she was clearly the most interesting character in the book (I remember a similar problem cropping up in The Lighthouse, in fact.)
It says something that even though there were (and are) things about James' writing that I find intensely annoying, I loved the experience of reading The Private Patient. And the reason is that James' writing is simply superb. Intense detail illuminates rather than bores, and helps make the novels setting a constantly atmospheric one. The richness of the whole thing is something I was delighted to immerse myself in every time I picked the book up again. She (like Rendell as Vine) writes like no other crime writer, takes a sumptuous care over the business like no peer of hers seems to do. Everything is detailed, everything is fully realised. She constructs the starting points for her plots with a kind of love: the confluence of events, the things which bring these eclectic people to this isolated setting, this macrocosm of a locked-room mystery, be it set in a lighthouse, private clinic, nursing college or religious retreat. Her build-ups are always fascinating, how she brings everything together, sets up the suspects, motives, relationships, histories. In fact, they're almost my favourite part of the P.D. James experience!
So, my disappointments aside, I mostly enjoyed the experience, and so probably will all James fans. The solution is a damp affair, but the rest is not. It's a good James novel, just not a great one. Which is a much better state of affairs than none at all.
Not a detective story, 19 Sep 2008
Rather than follow the long-honored tradition in detective novels of providing a tight conclusion which explains all the mysteries, this book explicitly tells the reader "there was an arrogance in wanting always to know the truth". Most appalling. I will not read another P.D. James.
An Unusually Upbeat Ending, 19 Sep 2008
This latest Adam Dalgliesh mystery is up to P.D. James' usual standard. Once again there is a world filled with unhappy people from dysfunctional families. But some of those involved do live lives less bleak than often portrayed in her books, and the ending (more of an epilogue, placed half a year after the events in the rest of the book) is actually filled with a whole series of relatively happy couples.
The first murder victim is a freelance investigative journalist, and what bothers me a little is the depiction of her profession. First of all, I don't know if there are that many investigative reporters working freelance. But more important is the image of investigative journalism. To me this conjures up memories of Watergate, and hardworking reporters exposing polluting companies, corrupt politicians, and similar scandals. To the people in this book, in the world that P.D. James portrays, investigative journalists dig up dirt on little people, ruining their lives, just so they can earn a lot of money.
When you watch British mystery shows, the journalists are usually a flock of nuisances, irritating everyone else as they get in the way and ask less than helpful questions. So in this P.D. James seems to be faithful to a British media tradition. But I don't think it reflects the real world at all.
Other than that minor niggle, this is a very good read.
Too many political rants, too little detection, 18 Sep 2008
At the grand age of 88, 46 years after her debut with 'Cover Her Face', it seems P D James has written her last mystery featuring Adam Dalgliesh. 'The Private Patient', the 14th novel in the series, is heavy with a sense of finality from the outset. The Special Investigation Squad is about to be disbanded, Inspector Kate Miskin is awaiting promotion and Dalgliesh himself, preparing to marry his fiancee Emma, is considering retirement. Without giving anything away, the epilogue settles all the regular characters' fates in such a conclusive way, it strongly suggests the author has no intention of revisiting them. I shall certainly be sorry to see the series end, but on the evidence of this book I think the time is probably right.
'The Private Patient' has much to enjoy and admire in it. P D James arguably writes the best prose in the crime genre; here, as usual, the writing is intelligent, evocative, sometimes even beautiful. She is also exceptionally good at describing locations and capturing their atmospheres - the lonely manor house which is the focus of this investigation and the nearby circle of prehistoric stones complete with a grisly supernatural legend are especially memorable. She also hasn't lost her ability to unnerve the reader; the first murder in this book, with the howling wind outside and the murderer dressed in a surgical gown and mask, certainly raised the hairs on the back of my neck (and brought to mind a similarly sinister scene in the old British thriller 'Green For Danger').
Unfortunately, in other ways the book is not up to the author's usual standard. The mystery itself and its eventual solution are unsatisfactory and never quite convincing. There's a fair amount of repetition too, particularly when it comes to the private lives of the secondary characters, with some paragraphs about Kate and DS Benton-Smith lifted almost verbatim from James's previous novel 'The Lighthouse'. Most puzzling of all, there's a subplot introduced towards the end of the book about Emma's friends Clara and Annie which is totally unnecessary and as a result rather distasteful. It serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to bring the pace of the plot to a grinding halt for a few pages. It's almost as if this was intended to be part of the story but then James lost interest. It's both surprising and disappointing coming from an author whose plots are usually so meticulously planned and executed.
Another problem for me, which has been getting steadily worse over the last few Dalgliesh novels, is James's insistence on shoehorning her political views into the narrative. I fully accept that I could be accused of bias because I happen to disagree strongly with her on just about every subject, but it's definitely more than that. Many other crime writers do it, I know, and that's absolutely fine, as long as it's kept within the context of the story. What annoys me about the way it's done here is the crassness and clumsiness with which these views are dropped into the book. Characters suddenly break into an unnatural flood of right-wing rhetoric without any warning and with no obvious connection to events around them; if you must put Tory propaganda in your novel, at least do it with a little subtlety. And I really have to complain about the ignorance of some of the views expressed; I can only imagine P D James does her research browsing through past Daily Mail editorials. One particular comment, stating that 90% of comprehensive school pupils speak no English, is so breathtakingly stupid that I almost threw the book away in disgust. I fear Baroness James has been spending too much time hobnobbing with her fellow Tory peers; like them, she clearly has no idea what is going on in the world outside her own smug, narrow upper-middle-class bubble.
Don't get me wrong, there is still enjoyment to be had from this book, but it is undoubtedly a long way from her best work. If this really is the final Dalgliesh novel, it's a great pity the series couldn't have ended on a higher note.
Bit of a strange mixture, 30 Sep 2008
"Bit quiet since you-know-who retired" says one copper half way through, so let's get 'him' out of the way! This book started strangely - by page 50 or so, I was convinced that Rankin, a supremely accomplished writer, was having me on. It's a spoof! Lavender Hill Mob meets Ocean's 11. Surely these guys can't be serious?!! In fact I came close to abandoning it BUT then something happened. Not just one event or a certain page but something a bit more gradual. Rankin was being serious after all. Yes, he's still commenting on social divides in Edinburgh, but on other things as well. His take on the aftermath of greed reminds me of the 'Pardoner's Tale' and his treatment of guilt Poe's story 'The Tell-Tale Heart' which interestingly is mentioned. After half way, I was hooked. Pretty good ending too!!!! I think he'll leave this one as a stand-alone whilst he decides his writing future. I really don't see any character here surviving in any major way into the future as none of them are properly developed. May be wrong!! Good read overall but can't give it 5 stars.
A Break From The Day Job (3.5* Stars), 28 Sep 2008
You're a celebrated crime author and you've just retired your most famous character - DI John Rebus, as if you didn't know - so what do you do next? Answer, you write an old-fashioned heist caper.
You'll have read the plot synopsis so I'll not summarise it again, I'll simply confine myself to making a few general points about the book.
First of all, this originally ran as a serial in the same publication that first printed Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch-lite `The Overlook' before it was published as a novel last year. I don't know if Ian has padded out `Doors Open' a bit before publishing it, but if I'm being honest, it doesn't particularly feel as if it's longer than it should be.
I found `Doors Open' to be a satisfying read, even if it doesn't come close to approaching the quality of a large number of the best of the superb Rebus novels. For anyone else it would be good, but Rankin has set his own standards so high, that you're perhaps looking for a bit more. I personally suspect that he wrote this as a bit of light relief after creating the increasingly complex plots of the `you know who' series for the past twenty years. Pretty soon I hope he'll be embarking on a major new series, perhaps one starring Siobhan Clarke.
His policeman here, DI Ransome could not be less like John Rebus if he tried. For a start, he doesn't rush bull-headed into things with no care for insulting his betters - or anyone, else for that matter. Ransome has a facility for diplomacy when among his peers (his counterpart from another station is the one officially investigating the art theft) and has subtle plans for his own advancement. He's no less effective than Rebus, but like I say, his methods are totally different. However, in local Edinburgh gangster Chib Calloway he's created a baddie cut from the same cloth, or perhaps that should be, hewn from the same block of granite, as 'Big Ger' Cafferty from the Rebus novels.
There are a few times in this novel where Rankin has his characters spit things out... as in `Blah, blah, blah', he spat. This despite the fact that the sentences often contain no sibilants. This is a bit lazy, and proves to me that Ian himself regards this as no more than a frippery; a break from the real day job. Having said that, it's still a professional effort and contains a good number of decent twists.
In summary, this is an effective and efficient little thriller, and it's Ian Rankin writing in a much lighter vein, but it's no less enjoyable for that. If I'm going to be picky, there are writers around like Christopher Brookmyre who, frankly, do this kind of thing much better. Still it's a nice enough stab at the sub-genre, and it's never less than entertaining. But it isn't major league Rankin and anyone approaching it with that expectation is going to be disappointed.
Phoning it in, 27 Sep 2008
I've enjoyed reading Rankin so much over the years that it almost feels like heresy to give his latest a ho-hum review.
"Doors Open" makes a fair stab at finding a post-Rebus voice, but I think Rankin should have waited longer. The plot starts strong, as do the characters; but while the plot becomes more complex and more improbable, the characters become more two-dimensional (and more improbable). Perhaps this is because there are too many characters, all struggling for some kind of primacy, which results in a rather he-said, she-said narrative style.
I suspect the author himself lost interest quite early on. How else to explain some atypically slapdash writing? The arch-villain, for example, gives a grizzled shake of the head. A "grizzled shake"? And on the following page the same character "barks" not just once, which would have been fine, but twice. Are we in a Biggles novel here, or The Incredible Journey? Another character feels "little compunction to switch on" his mobile phone, where "compulsion" would make more sense. And there is even an appearance by that splendid old orthodontal accessory the "fine toothcomb".
I'm sorry to niggle. From any other author, this book would have seemed a decent effort - but the large-print name "Ian Rankin" on the jacket raises expectations which the book doesn't live up to.
A strong start to his post-Rebus career, 22 Sep 2008
Ian Rankin is at something of a turning point in his writing career. Although he wrote other novels early on, he is mainly known for the Inspector Rebus series which has enjoyed enormous critical and popular success in recent years. Now Rebus is taking a break, at least temporarily, and Rankin has just released his first stand-alone novel since the Inspector retired. After such a popular series has ended, it can be difficult for the author to win over former readers with an entirely new book, but 'Doors Open' suggests that Ian Rankin still has what it takes to entertain us even without his most famous creation.
It seems he has intentionally set out to create something as different as possible from his previous work. 'Doors Open' is, for want of a better word, a 'caper.' The tone is lighter than the Rebus novels (although things take a serious turn towards the end), and the book reminded me of a modern Scottish version of the classic film 'The League Of Gentlemen'. Mike Mackenzie has made a fortune from computer software at an early age; now he's bored and looking for a bit of adventure. When his friend Robert Gissing suggests 'liberating' a series of paintings from the National Gallery storage vaults in Edinburgh, it's just what he's been looking for. With his other pal Allan and a student forger in tow, Mike approaches gangland boss Chib Calloway (who was at school with Mike) to aid them in their plan. Needless to say, some major complications ensue - greedy partners, an obsessed policeman out to nail Calloway and a monstrous Scandinavian debt-collector called Hate are drawn in to the situation and Mike and friends quickly find themselves completely out of their depth and in serious danger from both the police and the criminal underworld.
At first I was unsure about the book; it seemed to me rather unconvincing the way that Mike and Allan almost immediately fell in with Gissing's plan despite being normal, law-abiding citizens previously. However, as the day of the heist approaches that niggle was swiftly forgotten. Despite the change in subject and tone, Rankin has lost none of his ability to grip the reader. He also knows how to create likeable but fallible characters - readers will be willing Mike and his cohorts to succeed in their plan and get away with it. One of the author's favourite themes - the duality of the public and private sides of Edinburgh - is once again to the fore, complete with allusions to Jekyll and Hyde. In fact, there is enough that's familiar in this book to reassure Rebus devotees, but the fresh approach keeps it from seeming stale or repetitive.
I must admit I hope Ian Rankin will write more Rebus books at some future date, but I still thoroughly enjoyed 'Doors Open'. The end of the novel offers the possibility that we may see some of the characters again, and I would definitely welcome their return.
The perfect heist, 20 Sep 2008
Rankin's first novel since the retirement of Rebus a Oceans Eleven set in Edinburgh so more Firth of Forth five
It's a fairly quick read with the central characters well written
Dot.com millionaire businessman and art lover Mike Mackenzie is seduced into a scheme to commit a perfect crime along with a professor of art and his banker friend it seems like all talk until a chance encounter with a local gangster and ex school mate of Mike's ( a character that is very similar to a certain big ger mccafferty)
The book is really two halfs the first introducing the characters and taking us up to the heist itself, the second takes a darker turn as greed and mistrust and guilt start to consume the individuals with the police closing in who will hold their nerve
When I bought this I wondered if this as going to be the new ian rankin series as one door closes on Rebus another opens but no it's clear that this is just a one off novel
It's certainly entertaining enough with some good dialogue and a great set of characters it does though feel like a long short story rather than a full novel
That said it shows that Ian Rankin is a great storyteller
There's even a subtle reference to Rebus in the book
Definately worth a read and be interesting to see where Rankin takes us next I'm still buying
Flies off the pages..., 05 Oct 2008
I really enjoyed this novel. A fascinating concept - that a teenage girl wakes up one morning to find her entire family has gone. Just disappeared without a trace...And then she has to wait 25 years and to the making of a documentary about her life to find out the truth.
Fast paced, with excellent three-dimensional characters, I raced through this book in no time - it is truly unputdownable! I've heard a lot said that it's 'far-fetched' and has 'unecessary twists' and though this may be true, it is still great story-telling. I do feel that it's believable enough to hold your interest and the outcome, though given away a little easily, is worth the wait.
Highly recommended...
No time to do anything except making time to read this book!, 30 Sep 2008
Fans of Harlen Coben will love this book. Its very entertaining and will not disappoint. It has everything especially the one thing i always look for and thats humour. Like Coben its very family orientated and children/parents relationships are very important.
Nice start, shame about the end, 29 Sep 2008
Great start to the story, draws you in, leads to great expectations...then lets you down with a very predictable and disappointing ending ..which you think .. this can't be! The characters are initially good but are increasingly unbelievable and dissolve into what seems to be the author trying to tie everything up to the conclusion rather than coming up with an exciting ending. Pity it wasn't a better ending, which would have led to a 5 star book.
Great book...BUT.., 29 Sep 2008
I enjoyed this book throughout: great pace, characterization dealt with deftly (mostly through dialogue and interaction, which gave you a feel for them beyond background and description), lots of twists and changes and nail-biting moments... and a GREAT central thread. You just have to know why a whole family has disappeared. However....
**PLOT SPOILER** The plot jumps forward twenty-five years from that fateful day and a private investigator is called in some months down the line. Within forty-eight hours he's discovered that there's no social security or tax records for the girl's father. Now, the thing is many PI's are retired or ex-policemen. These would have been the first two things the police would have checked (and discovered) twenty-five years back. I think this is a major faux pas (or 'fox pass' as it's termed in the book) that LB should have picked up on.
Possibly it's just me from dealing regularly with the police and court systems for my work, or having read more Coben, Grisham, Lehane and Pelecanos than is perhaps healthy. But if you want to drop me a line before penning your next one, LB, I can make sure you don't make a similar foot fault.
But, apart from that, as I say, very, very good (would have been a decided 5 stars apart from that). Harlan has got some serious competition for once.
Keeps you transfixed, 28 Sep 2008
Well, I can see from the range of reviews for this book that it doesn't score highly with those seeking a literary masterpiece, but does with those who enjoy a fast paced thriller. I enjoy both sorts of books, but I suppose it also depends on how you define a literary masterpeice. In my eyes, this is almost it- fast paced, likable main characters and a plot full of twists and turns to the very end.
Plot has been covered by other reviewers, but I have to say that I found the method of using Cynthia's husband to be a good one. This offered an insight into events which was perhaps more interesting. Overall, I enjoyed this novel greatly and was sad to finally finish it, although on the other hand, I couldn't put it down. I am very much looking forward to the author's next novel.
Excellent, 05 Oct 2008
For someone who normally reads one chapter of a book each night before bed, I found myself reading chapter after chapter with this one - it was so riveting I could not put it down.
Once the characters are developed in the first few chapters, the story takes on a pace which gets more and more exciting as it heads towards it's crescendo. Excactly as all good stories should be.
I can't wait for the next installment!
Excellent, 02 Oct 2008
This books is fantastic. I can not wait for the next one. It is such a shame that sich a huge talent died after completing this and we do not get to see what other potential he had.
I can not recommend this highly enough.
"Now I know what my price is.", 30 Sep 2008
When Mikael Blomqvist arrives on remote Hedeby Island to do research for the biography of Swedish industrialist Henrik Vanger and his large family, he is looking for a place where he can avoid attention. Blomqvist, a financial journalist for Millenium magazine, is due to serve a three-month prison sentence soon for libeling a man he accused of criminal activity. For his own reasons, he did not challenge the charge and offered no defense, preferring to get the sentence over with in the face of enormous publicity. The temporary job he accepts the on this remote island involves the search for Harriet Vanger, Henrik's niece who disappeared from the island when she was sixteen--thirty-seven years ago.
Sometimes helping Blomqvist in his research is Lizbeth Salander, a young woman thought to have Asperger's syndrome, who is under the guardianship of the state. Salander has suffered enormous sexual and emotional abuse and has withdrawn to the point that she trusts no one. Marking events in her life through tattoos and body piercings, she lives as solitary a life as possible, connecting primarily through the internet where she has "met" several fellow computer hackers. Gradually, Salander begins to respond to Blomqvist's honesty and respect for her talents as she discovers important new information about the Vanger family.
Though the novel starts rather slowly as the characters are introduced and the genealogy of the Vanger family is explored, author Stieg Larsson succeeds in creating a sense of Sweden's social culture and atmosphere as he sets up this "closed room" mystery and creates vibrant characters to carry the action. The reader cares about Blomqvist and Salander from the beginning, as both are vulnerable and have suffered unjustly, and as the novel develops, the author also creates sympathy for the elderly Henrik Vanger. Larsson himself, however, was the editor of an anti-racist magazine, and his unforgettable depiction of some of the other Vanger relatives, who were ardent adherents of fascist and Nazi movements, carries the ring of authenticity.
As the novel develops, the skeletons in the Vanger family closet emerge, and a host of repulsive crimes, including murder, rape, torture, and the wanton abuse of women over many years are laid bare. The novel becomes an utterly compelling can't-put-it-downer, as the reader "travels" with Blomqvist and Salander, sharing their frustrations and their physical danger as they investigate this decades-old disappearance. Developed in minute detail, this rich novel is especially satisfying because it leaves no loose threads, connecting every detail to produce a blockbuster conclusion which satisfies in every way. The first novel of a trilogy which Larsson completed just before his premature death in 2004, at age fifty, this thrilling novel will leave its fans panting for the next installment. n Mary Whipple
The Girl Who Played with Fire, the second novel in the trilogy
The third novel, tentatively titled The Air Castle That Blew Up, has no publication date yet.
Too long winded, 08 Sep 2008
In short, I thought the basic plot in this book wasn't bad but the book dragged it on for far too long. Too much irrelevant detail and too much emphasis on the financial matters about which the central character wrote in his magazine; I didn't want to read about finance, I wanted a good thriller, and for me this was too long and drawn out. A shame, because as I said, the plot was quite good but all this extra detail made it a bit dull.
An imperfect page turner., 07 Sep 2008
Lots of hype to swallow with this one and one's reading is overshadowed by the knowledge of the tragic early death of the author. The tale is engrossing and the central concern, that of a child missing for 40 years, stirs the interest. Stylistically, its a mixed bag of genuinely taut and engaging prose, moments of lyricism and then pages of financial journalese that ought to have been edited down! The Swedish winter is very well evoked and the eerie atmosphere of the Vanger family island is sustained nicely but I wasn't convinced by Salander's unevenly developed character - the Asperger's reference is tantalisingly left hanging - and one can't escape the feeling that Blomqvist's triumphs are too closely related to the author's own ultimate fantasies as an investigative journalist.
Overall, I would encourage you to read it but the occasionally clunking translation will irritate as will the the rather too sudden denouement.
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Customer Reviews
Going way off the boil., 04 Oct 2008
From the crass character set-up over lunch at the Ivy to the very unsatisfactory ending with a confusing subplot, this book did not hold my attention at all. Is it really from the author of 'Devices and Desires' and 'Original Sin'? Can this be the work of the author of 'The Lighthouse?' It reads like a (bad) parody of Agatha Christie. A great disappointment.
P.D. James - The Private Patient, 23 Sep 2008
I received proofs of the this, the new P.D. James, and the new Barbara Vine The Birthday Present, within days of one another, and decided it would be fun to read the two new novels by the two leading females of the British crime genre back-to-back, and seeing which I preferred. The answer, I'm afraid, is that I preferred neither. Both are disappointing efforts in their own way: the writing of both is exceptional, but both fall down at the hurdle of being a satisfying crime novel. As for the Vine, the only thing shocking about the new novel from a writer normally relied on for her shocks, is that there are none! And as for this P.D. James, she can normally be relied upon to provide a satisfying and surprising solution to her richly detailed mysteries, but here she just doesn't bother. She takes the obvious, what she's rather been suggesting all along (which, of course, one suspects cannot possibly be the real solution: she surely has a lovely trick up her sleeve for us), and runs with it.
That is the largest problem with The Private Patient. There are others. A good example is the almost messianic way she treats Dalgliesh (especially in reference to one silly weepy scene with subordinate Miskin), which is completely ridiculous almost from the start. Her characters just do not come across as real people when she starts giving them such devotions. I am always prepared to suspend a little belief with James (whose plummy characters have always come from the 60's unless they are lower on the class ladder, in which case they are generally hard-working, sloppy-talking stalwarts), but things here get a little silly: the characters talk with an eloquence not even found in some Booker novels, and their speech exhibits a clarity of thought that real human beings just do not spontaneously have, in my experience. Another criticism, which stems from the same root as the previous problem, is her silly political asides. A recent interview in some British newspaper revealed James to have some rather... disappointing, beliefs, and she takes the time to air them here occasionally, in brief splutters of wrinkly condescension. It's not exactly a massive problem, but it's just not necessary, adds nothing to the story, and just kept jerking me out of the story. Which, in all other respects, was absolutely, completely engaging and embroiling. The only other disappointing aspect was the fact that Rhoda Gradwyn seemed such an intensely interesting character, but I didn't really felt like we got under her skin at all, which was a shame. She remained a little too much of an enigma, when she was clearly the most interesting character in the book (I remember a similar problem cropping up in The Lighthouse, in fact.)
It says something that even though there were (and are) things about James' writing that I find intensely annoying, I loved the experience of reading The Private Patient. And the reason is that James' writing is simply superb. Intense detail illuminates rather than bores, and helps make the novels setting a constantly atmospheric one. The richness of the whole thing is something I was delighted to immerse myself in every time I picked the book up again. She (like Rendell as Vine) writes like no other crime writer, takes a sumptuous care over the business like no peer of hers seems to do. Everything is detailed, everything is fully realised. She constructs the starting points for her plots with a kind of love: the confluence of events, the things which bring these eclectic people to this isolated setting, this macrocosm of a locked-room mystery, be it set in a lighthouse, private clinic, nursing college or religious retreat. Her build-ups are always fascinating, how she brings everything together, sets up the suspects, motives, relationships, histories. In fact, they're almost my favourite part of the P.D. James experience!
So, my disappointments aside, I mostly enjoyed the experience, and so probably will all James fans. The solution is a damp affair, but the rest is not. It's a good James novel, just not a great one. Which is a much better state of affairs than none at all.
Not a detective story, 19 Sep 2008
Rather than follow the long-honored tradition in detective novels of providing a tight conclusion which explains all the mysteries, this book explicitly tells the reader "there was an arrogance in wanting always to know the truth". Most appalling. I will not read another P.D. James.
An Unusually Upbeat Ending, 19 Sep 2008
This latest Adam Dalgliesh mystery is up to P.D. James' usual standard. Once again there is a world filled with unhappy people from dysfunctional families. But some of those involved do live lives less bleak than often portrayed in her books, and the ending (more of an epilogue, placed half a year after the events in the rest of the book) is actually filled with a whole series of relatively happy couples.
The first murder victim is a freelance investigative journalist, and what bothers me a little is the depiction of her profession. First of all, I don't know if there are that many investigative reporters working freelance. But more important is the image of investigative journalism. To me this conjures up memories of Watergate, and hardworking reporters exposing polluting companies, corrupt politicians, and similar scandals. To the people in this book, in the world that P.D. James portrays, investigative journalists dig up dirt on little people, ruining their lives, just so they can earn a lot of money.
When you watch British mystery shows, the journalists are usually a flock of nuisances, irritating everyone else as they get in the way and ask less than helpful questions. So in this P.D. James seems to be faithful to a British media tradition. But I don't think it reflects the real world at all.
Other than that minor niggle, this is a very good read.
Too many political rants, too little detection, 18 Sep 2008
At the grand age of 88, 46 years after her debut with 'Cover Her Face', it seems P D James has written her last mystery featuring Adam Dalgliesh. 'The Private Patient', the 14th novel in the series, is heavy with a sense of finality from the outset. The Special Investigation Squad is about to be disbanded, Inspector Kate Miskin is awaiting promotion and Dalgliesh himself, preparing to marry his fiancee Emma, is considering retirement. Without giving anything away, the epilogue settles all the regular characters' fates in such a conclusive way, it strongly suggests the author has no intention of revisiting them. I shall certainly be sorry to see the series end, but on the evidence of this book I think the time is probably right.
'The Private Patient' has much to enjoy and admire in it. P D James arguably writes the best prose in the crime genre; here, as usual, the writing is intelligent, evocative, sometimes even beautiful. She is also exceptionally good at describing locations and capturing their atmospheres - the lonely manor house which is the focus of this investigation and the nearby circle of prehistoric stones complete with a grisly supernatural legend are especially memorable. She also hasn't lost her ability to unnerve the reader; the first murder in this book, with the howling wind outside and the murderer dressed in a surgical gown and mask, certainly raised the hairs on the back of my neck (and brought to mind a similarly sinister scene in the old British thriller 'Green For Danger').
Unfortunately, in other ways the book is not up to the author's usual standard. The mystery itself and its eventual solution are unsatisfactory and never quite convincing. There's a fair amount of repetition too, particularly when it comes to the private lives of the secondary characters, with some paragraphs about Kate and DS Benton-Smith lifted almost verbatim from James's previous novel 'The Lighthouse'. Most puzzling of all, there's a subplot introduced towards the end of the book about Emma's friends Clara and Annie which is totally unnecessary and as a result rather distasteful. It serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to bring the pace of the plot to a grinding halt for a few pages. It's almost as if this was intended to be part of the story but then James lost interest. It's both surprising and disappointing coming from an author whose plots are usually so meticulously planned and executed.
Another problem for me, which has been getting steadily worse over the last few Dalgliesh novels, is James's insistence on shoehorning her political views into the narrative. I fully accept that I could be accused of bias because I happen to disagree strongly with her on just about every subject, but it's definitely more than that. Many other crime writers do it, I know, and that's absolutely fine, as long as it's kept within the context of the story. What annoys me about the way it's done here is the crassness and clumsiness with which these views are dropped into the book. Characters suddenly break into an unnatural flood of right-wing rhetoric without any warning and with no obvious connection to events around them; if you must put Tory propaganda in your novel, at least do it with a little subtlety. And I really have to complain about the ignorance of some of the views expressed; I can only imagine P D James does her research browsing through past Daily Mail editorials. One particular comment, stating that 90% of comprehensive school pupils speak no English, is so breathtakingly stupid that I almost threw the book away in disgust. I fear Baroness James has been spending too much time hobnobbing with her fellow Tory peers; like them, she clearly has no idea what is going on in the world outside her own smug, narrow upper-middle-class bubble.
Don't get me wrong, there is still enjoyment to be had from this book, but it is undoubtedly a long way from her best work. If this really is the final Dalgliesh novel, it's a great pity the series couldn't have ended on a higher note.
Bit of a strange mixture, 30 Sep 2008
"Bit quiet since you-know-who retired" says one copper half way through, so let's get 'him' out of the way! This book started strangely - by page 50 or so, I was convinced that Rankin, a supremely accomplished writer, was having me on. It's a spoof! Lavender Hill Mob meets Ocean's 11. Surely these guys can't be serious?!! In fact I came close to abandoning it BUT then something happened. Not just one event or a certain page but something a bit more gradual. Rankin was being serious after all. Yes, he's still commenting on social divides in Edinburgh, but on other things as well. His take on the aftermath of greed reminds me of the 'Pardoner's Tale' and his treatment of guilt Poe's story 'The Tell-Tale Heart' which interestingly is mentioned. After half way, I was hooked. Pretty good ending too!!!! I think he'll leave this one as a stand-alone whilst he decides his writing future. I really don't see any character here surviving in any major way into the future as none of them are properly developed. May be wrong!! Good read overall but can't give it 5 stars.
A Break From The Day Job (3.5* Stars), 28 Sep 2008
You're a celebrated crime author and you've just retired your most famous character - DI John Rebus, as if you didn't know - so what do you do next? Answer, you write an old-fashioned heist caper.
You'll have read the plot synopsis so I'll not summarise it again, I'll simply confine myself to making a few general points about the book.
First of all, this originally ran as a serial in the same publication that first printed Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch-lite `The Overlook' before it was published as a novel last year. I don't know if Ian has padded out `Doors Open' a bit before publishing it, but if I'm being honest, it doesn't particularly feel as if it's longer than it should be.
I found `Doors Open' to be a satisfying read, even if it doesn't come close to approaching the quality of a large number of the best of the superb Rebus novels. For anyone else it would be good, but Rankin has set his own standards so high, that you're perhaps looking for a bit more. I personally suspect that he wrote this as a bit of light relief after creating the increasingly complex plots of the `you know who' series for the past twenty years. Pretty soon I hope he'll be embarking on a major new series, perhaps one starring Siobhan Clarke.
His policeman here, DI Ransome could not be less like John Rebus if he tried. For a start, he doesn't rush bull-headed into things with no care for insulting his betters - or anyone, else for that matter. Ransome has a facility for diplomacy when among his peers (his counterpart from another station is the one officially investigating the art theft) and has subtle plans for his own advancement. He's no less effective than Rebus, but like I say, his methods are totally different. However, in local Edinburgh gangster Chib Calloway he's created a baddie cut from the same cloth, or perhaps that should be, hewn from the same block of granite, as 'Big Ger' Cafferty from the Rebus novels.
There are a few times in this novel where Rankin has his characters spit things out... as in `Blah, blah, blah', he spat. This despite the fact that the sentences often contain no sibilants. This is a bit lazy, and proves to me that Ian himself regards this as no more than a frippery; a break from the real day job. Having said that, it's still a professional effort and contains a good number of decent twists.
In summary, this is an effective and efficient little thriller, and it's Ian Rankin writing in a much lighter vein, but it's no less enjoyable for that. If I'm going to be picky, there are writers around like Christopher Brookmyre who, frankly, do this kind of thing much better. Still it's a nice enough stab at the sub-genre, and it's never less than entertaining. But it isn't major league Rankin and anyone approaching it with that expectation is going to be disappointed.
Phoning it in, 27 Sep 2008
I've enjoyed reading Rankin so much over the years that it almost feels like heresy to give his latest a ho-hum review.
"Doors Open" makes a fair stab at finding a post-Rebus voice, but I think Rankin should have waited longer. The plot starts strong, as do the characters; but while the plot becomes more complex and more improbable, the characters become more two-dimensional (and more improbable). Perhaps this is because there are too many characters, all struggling for some kind of primacy, which results in a rather he-said, she-said narrative style.
I suspect the author himself lost interest quite early on. How else to explain some atypically slapdash writing? The arch-villain, for example, gives a grizzled shake of the head. A "grizzled shake"? And on the following page the same character "barks" not just once, which would have been fine, but twice. Are we in a Biggles novel here, or The Incredible Journey? Another character feels "little compunction to switch on" his mobile phone, where "compulsion" would make more sense. And there is even an appearance by that splendid old orthodontal accessory the "fine toothcomb".
I'm sorry to niggle. From any other author, this book would have seemed a decent effort - but the large-print name "Ian Rankin" on the jacket raises expectations which the book doesn't live up to.
A strong start to his post-Rebus career, 22 Sep 2008
Ian Rankin is at something of a turning point in his writing career. Although he wrote other novels early on, he is mainly known for the Inspector Rebus series which has enjoyed enormous critical and popular success in recent years. Now Rebus is taking a break, at least temporarily, and Rankin has just released his first stand-alone novel since the Inspector retired. After such a popular series has ended, it can be difficult for the author to win over former readers with an entirely new book, but 'Doors Open' suggests that Ian Rankin still has what it takes to entertain us even without his most famous creation.
It seems he has intentionally set out to create something as different as possible from his previous work. 'Doors Open' is, for want of a better word, a 'caper.' The tone is lighter than the Rebus novels (although things take a serious turn towards the end), and the book reminded me of a modern Scottish version of the classic film 'The League Of Gentlemen'. Mike Mackenzie has made a fortune from computer software at an early age; now he's bored and looking for a bit of adventure. When his friend Robert Gissing suggests 'liberating' a series of paintings from the National Gallery storage vaults in Edinburgh, it's just what he's been looking for. With his other pal Allan and a student forger in tow, Mike approaches gangland boss Chib Calloway (who was at school with Mike) to aid them in their plan. Needless to say, some major complications ensue - greedy partners, an obsessed policeman out to nail Calloway and a monstrous Scandinavian debt-collector called Hate are drawn in to the situation and Mike and friends quickly find themselves completely out of their depth and in serious danger from both the police and the criminal underworld.
At first I was unsure about the book; it seemed to me rather unconvincing the way that Mike and Allan almost immediately fell in with Gissing's plan despite being normal, law-abiding citizens previously. However, as the day of the heist approaches that niggle was swiftly forgotten. Despite the change in subject and tone, Rankin has lost none of his ability to grip the reader. He also knows how to create likeable but fallible characters - readers will be willing Mike and his cohorts to succeed in their plan and get away with it. One of the author's favourite themes - the duality of the public and private sides of Edinburgh - is once again to the fore, complete with allusions to Jekyll and Hyde. In fact, there is enough that's familiar in this book to reassure Rebus devotees, but the fresh approach keeps it from seeming stale or repetitive.
I must admit I hope Ian Rankin will write more Rebus books at some future date, but I still thoroughly enjoyed 'Doors Open'. The end of the novel offers the possibility that we may see some of the characters again, and I would definitely welcome their return.
The perfect heist, 20 Sep 2008
Rankin's first novel since the retirement of Rebus a Oceans Eleven set in Edinburgh so more Firth of Forth five
It's a fairly quick read with the central characters well written
Dot.com millionaire businessman and art lover Mike Mackenzie is seduced into a scheme to commit a perfect crime along with a professor of art and his banker friend it seems like all talk until a chance encounter with a local gangster and ex school mate of Mike's ( a character that is very similar to a certain big ger mccafferty)
The book is really two halfs the first introducing the characters and taking us up to t | | |