A Good Hanging [Mass Market Paperback]

"A Good Hanging" is a moderately entertaining collection of short stories about Ian Rankin's Edinburgh based Detective Inspector Rebus. Many of them are like little potted versions of the Rebus novels with the labyrinthine plotting expunged and the denouements shortened. Some of the stories are better than others with my personal favourites being "Not Provan" set against the background of a Hearts football match and "The Gentlemen's Club" ,a tragic tale of illicit lust amongst privileged teenage girls.

"A Good Hanging," (1992) is a collection of twelve taut, tight short stories, in the Detective Chief Inspector John Rebus series, by the outstanding, award-winning, author Ian Rankin, currently the best-selling author of British mysteries in the United Kingdom. It can, like most of his work, be described as a police procedural, within the tartan noir school, and it is set in Edinburgh, more or less Rankin's home town. Mind you, it surely isn't the tourists' Edinburgh, with its tartan tea rooms and cobbled streets: Rankin takes readers to far meaner streets than any tourists will ever see. Within the book's pages we see many of the city's anonymous middle-class neighborhoods, and its slums. We also meet blackmailers, peeping toms, and a satisfying quotient of murderers.

However, the stories, well-done as they are, do rather lack the author's usual vibrant commentary on the city of Edinburgh, and on Scots weather, food preferences, social habits, etc. that I always so much enjoy. But, mind you, the book is still written with power, wit and energy. The stories also lack the emotional heft that would make them memorable. Only "The Dean Curse," about a retired army man, evidently written as a comment upon Dashiell Hammett's The Dain Curse (Crime Masterworks); and the title story, about a troupe of green young actors in Edinburgh for its famous annual drama festival, actually get any traction. I must also add that these short stories do not show the playful audacious invention of Irvine Welsh's Reheated Cabbage. Perhaps Rankin finds the short detective story format somewhat limiting. (By the way, "A Good Hanging," is a quote from the fool Feste, in William Shakespeare's TWELFTH NIGHT: "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.") Have I ever commented on Rankin's - and his creation Rebus's--mordant humor?

Well, just what is tartan noir? A bloodthirsty, bloody-minded business, to be sure, more violent than the average British mystery, but, thankfully, leavened a bit with that mordant Scots humor. Written (duh!) by Scots. James Ellroy, American author of LA Confidential, has dubbed Rankin the progenitor - and king--of tartan noir. Rankin was nominated for an Edgar Award for Black And Blue: An Inspector Rebus Novel 8, for which he won England's prestigious Gold Dagger Award. He was born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. He's been employed as grape-picker, swineherd, taxman, hi-fi journalist, and punk musician. His first Rebus novel Knots And Crosses was published in 1987. His works are now receiving television treatment. His novels can be enjoyed individually; it's not necessary to go back to "Knots and Crosses" to enjoy them: but I wouldn't start here.

A collection of short stories is an excellent way to be introduced to an author, and this collection should net Ian Rankin many, many new readers.

Such an edition as this is rather a throw-back to those good-old 'golden' days of the great mystery writers, such as Dame Agatha, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout and many others who regularly wrote short stories along with their full-length novels. Eventually, when a dozen or so of these little gems had accrued in the author's basket, they would be brought out in their own separate volume. Many of these collections are as well known as the authors' full-length novels.

Following this lead, Mr. Rankin displays a sure touch with this batch of shorter stories, all of which feature Detective Inspector John Rebus of the Edinburgh police force. There are other continuing characters as well, who surface here or there, providing a spot of humor or compassion or just camaraderie.

I'd not read anthing by Mr. Rankin before finding this book. That situation is about to be remedied as I go looking for "Knots and Crosses" to begin at the beginning of the Inspector Rebus tales. I would highly recommend a similar path to any other devoted readers of mystery novels, especially those who treasure a setting that's nearly part of the plot, characters with whom one can practically form a friendship, and above all, exellent writing.