The Impossible Dead

Ian Rankin is my favorite Scottish author, I loved his Inspector Rebus, and am coming to like his Inspector Malcolm Fox. Like Rebus, Malcolm Fox is a loner, not really happy in this job, but he loves police work. Working for the 'Complaints' is a job looking into the lives of his colleagues and their misdeeds. No one likes them, can't say I blame them, but as Malcolm says, " Someone's got to do it."Inspector Malcolm Fox's latest investigation is a doozy. He and his two fellow officers are in the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy, about an hour out of Edinburgh. Here they are to look into a detective who has sexually assaulted several women. Of course, the small police force resents this intrusion, and do their best to cover up for the office, Paul Carter. Finding no help within the police building, they go outside and talk to everyone and anyone who might have known Paul and/or his family. Malcolm ends up talking to Paul's uncle, Alan a gruff old gent, but seems he is full of honesty and knows his stuff. He is the one who made the original complaint against Paul. Alan is an ex-officer. The team also talks to a woman who was assaulted, and instead of help, she becomes riled up and tires to slit her wrists. Nothing, it seems, is going right for this team. Alan Carter is found dead, suggestive of a suicide, but it is very suspicious. The investigation proceeds, and this is where some of the really interesting plot falls apart for me. The terrorism that plagues us today had its origins many years ago, and some of that is brought into this novel. The team apparently feels the same, and so does Malcolm's boss. They all want him to stop, no need to go further. But Malcolm is a perfectionist, and he must find the truth.We are privy to some of Malcolm's personal issues in this novel. His father is ill, his angry, unemployed sister helps to care for him, and Malcolm must spend time getting to know both of them in a better light. Malcolm Fox is growing on me. This is the second novel of Ian Rankins about the Complaints. This department is OK, but I am becoming weary of the hostility that accompanies each story set. His reputation is growing, so soon, I hope, a station will welcome him, and we can move on.Recommended. prisrob

While many mystery writers have tried, few succeed in creating a second series. James Lee Burke's Billy Bob Holland is merely a westernized version of Dave Robicheaux and Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone is Spenser in a different guise. Ian Rankin, the master of Scottish noir, delivers. With John Rebus retired in EXIT MUSIC, one of the best books in the entire Rebus series, what would he do for an encore?Enter Malcolm Fox. Fox is exactly the type of policeman Rebus would loath. He is member of the Professional Standards Units, formerly Complaints and Conduct, police officers who investigate other police officers. He does not drink (though an argument can be said that single malt might be more salubrious to one's health than a steady diet of Irn-Bru.) He suffers from a crisis of confidence in his work, even being tormented by his ailing father of not being a real detective doing real police work.In the second book to feature Malcolm Fox, THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD, Rankin once again weaves a plot with many threads. Called in by Fife Constabulary to investigate the colleagues of disgraced detective Paul Carter, Fox and two other members of the Lothian and Borders Professional Standards Unit, Sergeant Tony Kaye and Constable Joe Naysmith, meet with the predicted closing of the ranks. During the course of the investigation Fox interviews the original complainant, Paul's uncle and retired policeman, Alan Carter. Alan now owns a security company and has also been retained to investigate a 25-year old cold case.When Alan is murdered with Paul fit-to-order, Fox picks up the quest. Why was the death of lawyers and Scottish separatist firebrand Francis Vernal ruled a suicide and not properly investigated? Rankin now weaves his plot. There is the passion of homegrown separatist of the mid-1980s, a gaggle of groups, including those who used terror tactics to attempt to achieve their cause. Dark Harvest Commando actually used anthrax "mined" from Gruinald Island--the island itself the site of British experiments in biological warfare during World War II. The island became uninhabitable.Fox continues to pull on the threads, uncovering a conspiracy of silence. Involvement of MI-5, police corruption that results in gun running and destruction of evidence, stonewalling by the powers that be, favors called in at the New Club--an exclusive men's club whose membership include the powerful and rich. In the midst of his investigation Fox also deals with family issues. His father lives in a retirement home, his dementia becoming more pervasive. His sister, unemployed and always distraught, brings more tension into the family struggles. While poring over a box of old family photos with his father, Fox discovers a cousin, Chris Fox, who was a member of the separatist movement and who died in an unexplained motorbike accident. Fox and his team succeed in solving a crime that no one wants solved, ultimately and ironically achieving justice.The dialogue is sparkling. Perhaps it is the trio rather than the duo of Rebus and Siobhan in the earlier books that make the language so real.As always there are enough topical events to not only anchor the book in time, but give it a strong sense of place: the fear of new terrorist attacks, the outrage at the release of Lockerbie bomber and mastermind Megrabi, and the much delayed launch of a new tram system in Edinburgh.THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD is a strong effort by one of the true masters of the mystery genre. Malcolm Fox deserves to be judged and read as his own man.

DI Malcolm Fox and his team of Edinburgh’s Complaints officers are called to investigate several police officers in Fife who are alleged to have helped cover up the illegal behaviour of another officer there, an officer who had been charged and convicted of several crimes. While interviewing the uncle of the convicted cop, who had actually filed the original complaints against his nephew, Fox learns of a long-buried possible political cover-up, one stretching back to the 1980s and Scottish Nationalist groups. But the information he uncovers has repercussions in the present day, up to and including murder…. I think this series by Ian Rankin is much less well-known than his Inspector Rebus books, but they contain a certain grim grittiness that works very well in the setting of Edinburgh. Fox is a complicated character, both as a cop and as a human being, with various family dramas in addition to the work that he does, work that is generally unthanked given that his fellow police officers despise his work. This is only the second book in the series and a reader could start here without too much difficulty, but I think it has more resonance if one reads the first (“The Complaints”) novel before tackling this one, if only to have a better understanding of the familial and work relationships involved; recommended, but not for the squeamish!

Interesting plot , undercurrent of sardonic humor Ian Rankin never disappointsinspector fox an antithesis of Rebus but still appeals ... .

Having read The Complaints this was the obvious next choice. That said, as with all Rankins' novels reading them 'out of date order' isn't a problem.Rankin's skill in crafting a new charactor after Rebus is masterful. Malcolm Fox at first seems a little straight-laced and boring after the charismatic Rebus. But the author gradually draws one into Fox's charactor. It's very different to Rebus' but just as interesting, if anything deeper, and certainly just as edgy. In the end one empathises with Fox just as one did with Rebus. And that's an act of sheer genius by Rankin.Enjoy!

L'ho comprato per confrontarlo con la traduzione italiana. Un buon metodo per migliorare l'inglese. Il libro è ben rilegato e ha una grafica chiara

C'est le premier roman de Ian Rankin que je lis et j'aime bien. C'est écrit dans un anglais châtié, agréable, et l'histoire de ces inspecteurs de l'IGS écossaise qui ne semblent pas avoir beaucoup de pouvoir, est bien racontée. Malcolm Fox, le personnage principal n'est pas alcoolique mais a un côté Harry Hole, avec ses soucis familiaux. La grande différence avec le héros scandinave, c'est qu'il délègue à ses 2 subordonnés.

la suite de The Complaints.... Une plongée dans le milieu des indépendantistes écossais, dans le passé, dans les paysages... Ian Rankin est toujours aussi virtuose...