''Exit Music'' is the seventeenth
crime novel in the internationally
bestselling
A bestseller is a book or other media noted for its top selling status, with bestseller lists published by newspapers, magazines, and book store chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and specialties (novel, nonfiction book, cookb ...
Inspector Rebus
The ''Inspector Rebus'' books are a series of detective novels by the Scottish author Sir Ian Rankin. The novels, centred on Detective Inspector John Rebus, are mostly based in and around Edinburgh. They are considered an important contrib ...
series, written by
Ian Rankin
Sir Ian James Rankin (born 28 April 1960) is a Scottish crime writer, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels.
Early life
Rankin was born in Cardenden, Fife. His father, James, owned a grocery shop, and his mother, Isobel, worked in a sch ...
. It was published on 6 September 2007.
The book is named after the
Radiohead song "
Exit Music (For a Film)".
Plot summary
The novel takes place on November 15-27, 2006;
Rebus
A rebus () is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases. For example: the word "been" might be depicted by a rebus showing an illustrated bumblebee next to a plus sign (+ ...
's last day in the Edinburgh
CID is November 25. Rebus and
Siobhan Clarke
This is a list of characters from the ''Inspector Rebus'' series of detective novels by the Scottish writer Ian Rankin. They are all fictional characters that have appeared in more than one novel in the series. A number of the characters appe ...
are investigating the death of a famous Russian exile poet who was mugged and beaten to death on King's Stables Road. Then a sound recordist with close ties to the dead Russian poet dies at home in an arson fire. Rebus discovers that the dead poet had eaten his last meal with the recordist, then had a drink with
Morris Gerald Cafferty, Rebus's gangster nemesis, in a bar where Cafferty was meeting a
Russian oligarch
Russian oligarchs ( Russian: олигархи, romanized: ''oligarkhi'') are business oligarchs of the former Soviet republics who rapidly accumulated wealth in the 1990s via the Russian privatisation that followed the dissolution of the Sovi ...
and a
Labour official from the
Scottish Parliament. Rebus finds Cafferty's hand in many schemes (drugs, abusive landlord practices), but the biggest ones involve real estate and are quite legitimate.
Meanwhile DS Siobhan Clarke, on the cusp of promotion to DI and given charge of the case, tries to find her own way, both dreading and looking forward to losing her mentor. She takes on a protégé of her own, a street cop from a family involved with petty crime, Todd Goodyear.
Rebus is suspended for insulting a powerful Scottish banker in the presence of the Chief Constable. He continues to pursue his hunches, however, often with Clarke's collusion. At one point he meets Cafferty alone; Cafferty is attacked immediately afterwards, and Rebus is carefully framed for it. On his last day on the job, however, Rebus succeeds in disentangling his suspicions and identifies the killers of the poet and the sound recordist. It takes him a little longer to discover who framed him for the attack on Cafferty.
Place in the Rebus Novels
''Exit Music'' includes
Rebus
A rebus () is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases. For example: the word "been" might be depicted by a rebus showing an illustrated bumblebee next to a plus sign (+ ...
's retirement at the age of 60. Rankin had been looking forward to this event at least since 2000, when he commented in an interview that Rebus “lives in real time; he was 38 in ''Knots & Crosses'' and he's 52 now. He'll have to retire at 55.” Rebus in fact postponed retirement until age 60 (November 2006), clinging to his job, although in the two previous books (
Fleshmarket Close
''Fleshmarket Close'' is a 2004 crime novel by Ian Rankin, and is named after a real close in Edinburgh between the High Street and Market Street, crossing Cockburn Street. It is the fifteenth of the Inspector Rebus novels. "Fleshmarket" is th ...
and
The Naming of the Dead) he thought frequently about his upcoming retirement. Rankin appeared ambivalent about whether the book series would end with Rebus’s retirement; in a video clip, he says ''Exit Music'' “may be the final book” and offers two possible endings: Rebus kissed emphatically by (presumably) Siobhan Clarke, or Rebus stabbed mortally by a dying Cafferty. The book’s actual ending is more ambivalent, a kind of anti-
Reichenbach Falls
The Reichenbach Falls (german: Reichenbachfälle) are a waterfall cascade of seven steps on the stream called Rychenbach in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland. They drop over a total height of about . At , the upper falls, known as th ...
in which Rebus resuscitates a dying Cafferty.
In fact, Rankin did not publish another Rebus novel for five years; he continued to write about
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...
’s police, but with a new protagonist,
Malcolm Fox, in two novels, ''
The Complaints'' (2009) and ''
The Impossible Dead'' (2011), before bringing Rebus back as a co-protagonist with Fox in ''
Standing in Another Man's Grave'' (2012).
The character of Malcolm Fox, who is assigned to “the Complaints” or Internal Affairs investigating police corruption, is well-prepared for in ''Exit Music''. Todd Goodyear, Siobhan’s enthusiastic disciple, provides both Rebus and Clarke with food for thought about how the police has changed since Rebus joined (and also since Clarke joined). Rebus began his career in a world where even good policemen lied on the witness stand to protect each other or, as in the Spaven case described in ''
Black and Blue
''Black and Blue'' is the 13th British and 15th American studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 23 April 1976 by Rolling Stones Records.
This album was the first recorded after former guitarist Mick Taylor qu ...
'', to frame a likely culprit. To some extent, his maverick attitude has allowed him to steer clear of such situations and make his own moral decisions. On the other hand, many people (including Cafferty himself) assume that he is Cafferty’s tool. While Siobhan is very aware of the potential for corruption, she could never be part of the “brotherhood” and, with the advent of a more educated police force, the concept of “us against them” is foreign to her. Laura Severin comments,
iobhan’sdefinition of herself is pragmatic rather than heroic and therefore not dependent on whether Cafferty lives or dies. This last scene f ''Exit Music''illustrates that Rebus has an investment in a patriarchy structured around evil and good, while Clarke … is already an inhabitant of a postpatriarchal world more alert to social, cultural and political complexities.
Fox will be pragmatic rather than heroic, and as an investigator even more outside the brotherhood of police detectives than Siobhan, as a woman officer.
Awards
Won,
ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for Author of the Year, 2008 (awarded to Ian Rankin).
References
External links
Ian Rankin reads the opening to ''Exit Music''o
Guardian Unlimited's Books Blog
{{Ian Rankin
2007 British novels
Inspector Rebus novels
Novels set in Edinburgh
Orion Books books