The Falls (Rankin novel)
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 First edition | |
| Author | Ian Rankin |
|---|---|
| Country | Scotland |
| Language | English |
| Series | Inspector Rebus |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Orion Books |
Publication date | 2001 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 475 pages |
| ISBN | 0-7528-4405-9 |
| OCLC | 59522317 |
| Preceded by | Set in Darkness |
| Followed by | Resurrection Men |
The Falls is a 2001 crime novel by Ian Rankin. It is the twelfth of the Inspector Rebus novels.[1]
Plot summary[edit]
A student vanishes in Edinburgh and her wealthy family of bankers ensures Lothian and Borders Police is under pressure to find her. The novel presents in detail a difficult case, where the newly appointed (and first female) Chief Super, Gill Templer, is trying to please her superiors and manipulate her CID officers. In the course of the novel, DC Siobhan Clarke must decide whether to take a plum position offered her by DCS Templer or stick with investigation in the style of John Rebus.[2]
Two sets of clues, one nineteenth-century and one twenty-first-century, appear. A carved wooden doll in a coffin found near the missing woman's East Lothian home leads Rebus to the National Museum of Scotland's collection of dolls in coffins found on Arthur's Seat in 1836, after the famous Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh.[3] Rebus also wanders into the Surgeons' Hall, where he meets several forensic pathologists of his acquaintance and sees the Burke and Hare exhibit there.[4] A museum curator, Jean Burchill, alerts him to what might be a more recent serial killer marking his exploits with such coffins. While Rebus pursues these historical angles in libraries, police archives, and museums, DC Siobhan Clarke interacts with an electronic trail via computer and mobile phone. Clarke discovers that the woman who disappeared had been playing an Internet role-playing game,[5] and tackles the virtual Quizmaster; she risks the same fate as the missing girl.
TV Adaptation[edit]
The Falls was the first episode in the second Rebus television series, starring Ken Stott, airing in 2006. This version is substantially changed from the novel and somewhat resembles the plot of the film Chinatown.
References[edit]
- ^ The Falls by Ian Rankin official website
- ^ Peter Guttridge, "Uptown Top Rankin," The Guardian 17 March 2001. Gill Plain analyzes the situation in terms of political forces: "[Clarke's] mentors--Templer or Rebus--represent a choice between the New Labour vision of a modern service economy and the historic, but still potent, legacy of urban working-class Scotland." Gill Plain, "Concepts of Corruption: Crime Fiction and the Scottish 'State'," in The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature, ed. Berthold Schoene (Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 137.
- ^ "The Mystery of the Miniature Coffins".
- ^ Carolyn McCracken Flesher, in The Doctor Dissected: A Cultural Autopsy of the Burke and Hare Murder (Oxford University Press, 2012), suggests that in this novel (along with the preceding Set in Darkness and the following Resurrection Men), "Rankin works his way through the issues underlying the national metaphor ... enacted through Burke and Hare.... John Rebus demonstrates new uses for Burke and Hare in the place that is today's Scotland" (p. 221).
- ^ This actually takes the form of a treasure hunt conducted using email; the only reward for solving a clue is the next clue. Possibly for this reason, Guttridge comments that "The virtual reality conjured up in the game pales by comparison" with Rebus's handling of material clues.Peter Guttridge, "Uptown Top Rankin," The Guardian 17 March 2001
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