Book Review

By Derryll White

Rankin, Ian (1992). Tooth & Nail.

“How many wolves do we feel on our heels,

                  While our real enemies go in sheepskin.

— Malcolm Lowry.

“The dark heart” is a phrase that rings from the very beginning of ‘Tooth & Nail’. It is a dark novel presenting the scary nature of violent human predators, or as the press labels them, “serial killers.”

Ian Rankin is uncanny in making DI John Rebus markedly human in all of this darkness. Rebus makes the reader believe that there are parallel worlds of family, love and common sense just removed from death, destruction and loss. The reader is quick to embrace these other parts of Rebus, removed from the frightening murder inquiry.

Rankin takes the reader, at an ever-quickening pace, through the stratigraphy of London’s police force, the codes and secrets of the city’s criminal community, and into and through the accelerating insanity of a serial killer. It is a moving journey populated throughout with the redeeming positive other – Rebus’ relationship with a psychology graduate, his love and care for his daughter, and his growing friendship with Chief Inspector George Flight, the man who requested the posting of Rebus from Scotland to assist with the London case.

An amazing feat really, to create such believable balance in a story always teetering on the edge of tragedy. Ian Rankin is most worthy of any reader’s attention.

****

Excerpts from the novel:

DARKNESS – “Not exactly. It’s just …. Evil.”

Flight nodded. “Got to keep a perspective though, John, eh? Otherwise they’d go on getting away with it. If it’s so horrible, we all shy away from the truth, then everybody gets away with murder. And worse than murder.”

Rebus looked up. “What’s worse than murder.”

LONDON VS. GLASGOW – Rebus smiled and moved on. London was different to all this. It felt more congested, things moved to quickly, there seemed pressure and stress everywhere. Driving a car from A to B, shopping for groceries, going out for the evening, all were turned into immensely tiring activities. Londoners appeared to him to be on a very short fuse indeed. Here, the people were stoics. They used their humour as a barrier against everything Londoners had to take on the chin. Different worlds. Different civilizations. Glasgow had been the second city of the Empire. It had been the first city of Scotland all through the twentieth century.

RELIGION – Rebus had seen them all, all the available religions. He had tasted them and each one tasted bitter in its own particular way. Where was the religion for those who did not feel guilty, did not feel shame, did not regret getting angry or getting even, or, better yet, getting more than even? Where was the religion for a man who believed that good and bad must coexist, even within the individual? Where was the religion for a man who believed in God but not in God’s religion?

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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