Andrew Taylor

New departures

For a crime writer, success comes with its dark side.

issue 17 October 2009

For a crime writer, success comes with its dark side. As Conan Doyle learned to his cost, your readers often become obsessively attached to your series hero, while you yourself find him or her increasingly tiresome — and limiting. Ian Rankin’s well-deserved success with the genre has largely derived from his Inspector Rebus novels set in Edinburgh. When he brought the series to an apparent end with Exit Music in 2007, his readers were curious to know what lay ahead. Last year’s Doors Open, a relatively lightweight caper novel set in Edinburgh, was no more than an expanded version of a previously published short story and clearly a way of marking time.

Now we know the answer. This year, Rankin returns with The Complaints, which may well be the first of a new series. It’s set in the unpopular department at Lothian and Borders Police headquarters that investigates complaints against the police themselves.

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