MICK HERRON news flash: New Slough House novel in August 2025!
Ian Rankin. Midnight and Blue. UK: Orion Books, 2024.
Rankin's previous work, A Heart Full of Headstones (LL299 in 2022), was densely packed with criminal activity and police corruption. Rebus himself was facing trial—over the death of Edinburgh crime boss Big Ger Cafferty—so that novel whirled us through a chaotic mix of cops, crooks, and cronies that led to our hero's conviction and life sentence in prison. Hard to grasp, I know! In retirement and not in great health, Rebus is nearby when a fellow inmate is murdered—by a guard, the convicts mutter. Also interned for life is Darryl Christie who had taken over as the city's crime czar, still ruling from prison, ensuring a steady flow of drugs into the population. Christie's protection keeps Rebus from potential harm, for example from his cell neighbour Harrison, associate of Hanlon, the ultimate provider of the drugs. Yet our man can't resist poking a finger into this dangerous and complicated cluster.
DS Christine Esson, with partner Mulgrew, heads the prison death case while Malcolm Fox, Rebus' former nemesis at headquarters, horns in for any self-aggrandizing opportunity. So many suspects and so many layers, as we expect from Rankin. With the convicts ready to riot, harried prison governor Tennant, and Christie too, want Rebus to share any info he picks up and he's only too happy to oblige. His friend DI Siobhan Clarke works her own murder case that, through gangster activities, has a tenuous connection to Esson's case. Thus Rebus acquires two additional contacts for reporting his bits of news, including the despised Fox. Every new, sharply defined character stirs this boiling pot of motives and underhanded schemes. Let's hope for satisfactory results from about three different directions.
Physically, Rebus may have slowed down a bit, but Rankin hasn't! Connections, kinships, and alliances need careful unravelling by the most diligent investigators. Brimming with cagey criminal moves and prison lore and dubious police extracurriculars, Midnight and Blue is simply today's best in the genre.
Bits
▪ "Bastard stitched me up," he snarled, eyes glowing, teeth showing. Spittle flew from his mouth, flecks of it hitting Rebus's face. (18)
▪ Again Siobhan Clarke sighed. "Oh Jesus, John, what if you're caught?" (24)
▪ "I'll do what I can. No promises. But you'll owe me, and you know what I want." (25)
▪ "It's just," Esson went on, "the days she's on duty seem to match yours, even the same double shifts." (52)
▪ Wasn't it more fun a decade or two back, when a few rules could be bent or broken? Rebus and his contemporaries hadn't had to worry about internet warriors, the brandishing of mobile phone cameras or being "cancelled". (94)
▪ "Does your wife know about Young Fresh East Coast? Should we maybe go chat with her?" (98)
▪ "The internet has normalised stuff that would have been off limits two generations back. Girls like Jasmine are bombarded with it." (126)
▪ "Malcolm seems a good guy, no bullshit about him." (157)
▪ "Say you'd become a prison officer rather than a cop ‒ how well would you have coped, day in, day out?" (242)
▪ "Fiscal's office will be shitting brimstone when I tell them. You've compromised this inquiry, DI Fox." (226)
Paul Murray. The Bee Sting. New York: Picador, 2023.
Irish school girls again! Honestly, the TPL gods send my choices randomly. Cass, daughter of Imelda and Dickie Barnes, and her BFF Elaine, daughter of Big Mike and Joan Comerford, bond over all the silliness teenagers get up to. But maybe Cass's future is not as rosy as Elaine's; her dream of their attending university together is looking shaky. Economic recession is hitting hard on Dickie's car sales company. One after another we see deep into the effect on the family, on their relationships with friends and neighbours, and how social morals govern a small town. From teen angst to a mother's traumatic loss to a father's inarticulate rage, this gifted author inhabits the skin of each character so that we are living with them: joking, arguing, condescending, suffering, grieving, yearning, experimenting. Love the way Imelda's thoughts are unpunctuated, so true to her nature. At close to 650 pages, where is Bee Sting going with this? Isn't there supposed to be a crime here somewhere?
Ah. Foreplay. At the heart is the marriage of Imelda, from the rough, often violent Caffrey family, and Dickie, of the once-well-respected Barnes family. With financial ruin looming, the couple hurl daily blame at each other for the slightest upsets, half trusting that his wealthy father Maurice will rescue them from public shame. Both are haunted by the ghost of Dickie's brother Frank; Dickie further so, by the Dublin life he gave up. There's no lack of mysteries along the way as two generations wrestle with "finding" themselves, choosing their path from shrinking options, trying to avoid deception, bearing responsibility when things go awry. Yet what deviltry seems to trick them just beyond their grasp? When tragedy strikes, does madness follow?
Paul Murray brings a universal reality to his people; their impulses and experiences ring familiar, reflecting today's widespread anxieties. Enthralling ‒ would be the right word for this superlative work.
Dickie
▪ When people asked Dickie, aged seven, what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would invariably answer, A priest. (361)
▪ I mean, what if you don't want to spend the rest of your life in your home town selling cars? (396)
▪ It's not enough to build it, Dickie. You need to be ready to protect it. Survival is a zero-sum game. (404)
▪ He beat her brothers half to death growing up. He killed her cat, Dickie! (423)
▪ Do you think you're in any fit state to make this kind of a decision? Willie said. Can't you see how insane this is? (430)
Imelda
▪ Dickie made a fortune and Imelda spent two ‒ that was what people said. (42)
▪ Frank beguiled Daddy Just as Imelda beguiled Maurice Both knowing it bound the two of them together too But that was good (214)
▪ And she thought she would burn up into cinders for love of him (259)
▪ So you're just going to accept it she says Accept that he's fired you Your own father (300)
▪ Big Mike All this time Who would ever have guessed she thinks Who would ever (323)
Cass
▪ At the teacher's desk, Miss Grehan regarded her merrily. Such a wonderful poem, Cass, she said. Well done. (36)
▪ They have arrived at a point, he and his daughter, where she can only be happy in his company if she feels like she has bested him. (351)
▪ Is she still waiting for you to make a move? Is she punishing you for not making one? Has she lost interest? (531)
PJ
▪ My dad says your dad's garage is in trouble, Nev says, without looking away from the screen. He says it's going into liquidation. (95)
▪ Cass always tells him they won't get divorced because Mam thinks it's a sin. (99)
▪ Granddad would know how to fix things. Why doesn't Dad just ask him? (99)
Revelation
This must be what it feels like to be dying, he thinks; the world remains around you, like a lover who does not want to hurt you by leaving, but in spirit it's already gone, taking with it the meaning of everything you shared. In truth it is already transforming into a future you will never be a part of; and you realize only then that it has been transforming all of this time, throughout your whole life, and you with it; and that, in fact, is life, though you never knew, and now it is over. (477)