You die for being available

In 1836, while rabbit-hunting on Arthur's Seat, a group of boys discovered 17 miniature coffins, each about 10 cm long, containing carved wooden dolls wearing custom clothes. The most reasonable theory behind their existence is that someone wanted to lay to rest the victims of Burke and Hare (who supplied the university with cadavers for dissection, by making their own), who without a proper burial would be denied entrance to heaven.

We saw eight of the coffins, with dolls, on display at the National Museum of Scotland.

The coffins are tiny and creepy and weird.

Stare at them long enough and you want to read a novel about them.

Thank goodness Ian Rankin wrote one.

Ian Rankin's The Falls is the twelfth Inspector Rebus novel. I'd read only one of them previously, the very first one. I'd absolutely wanted to read a Rebus novel before heading to Edinburgh. But having been, I needed to read The Falls, which incorporates the coffins of Arthur's Seat.

A new coffin doll has turned up near Edinburgh, clearly connected to a woman recently reported missing. The investigation follows unconventional paths, just under the radar of the official police authority, and turns to history as a key. The last few decades have in fact seen several more dolls and bodies, never connected until now.

Another line of inquiry goes online when it's discovered the missing person was in communication with Quizmaster, who led her on a kind of treasure hunt with cryptic crossword-like clues. Rankin notes in the introduction,

Cyberspace is the perfect haunt of creeps, charlatans and hunters. It's a place full of shape-shifters.

I thoroughly enjoyed reliving Edinburgh's fascinating gloom within these pages. I also really appreciated the mystery's resolution, landing solidly in that surprisingly difficult-to-achieve zone between eye-rollingly obvious and unfairly out of the blue.

"Interesting poem, this," he said, waving the book. It was more of a pamphlet really, pink cover with a line-drawing illustration. Then he recited a couple of lines:

'You do not die for being bad, you die
For being available.'

Rebus closed the book, put it down."I'd never thought of it like that before," he said, "but it's true."

Shitty, shitty rain



Edinburgh rain was like a judgement. It soaked into the bones, into the structures of the buildings, into the memories of the tourists. It lingered for days, splashing up from puddles by the roadside, breaking up marriages, chilling, killing, omnipresent. The typical postcard home from an Edinburgh boarding-house: "Edinburgh is lovely. The people rather reserved. Saw the Castle yesterday, and the Scott Monument. It's a very small city, almost a town really. You could fit it inside New York and never notice it. Weather could be better."

Photo by Steffani Cameron.

Weather could be better. The art of euphemism. Shitty, shitty rain.

— from Knots and Crosses, by Ian Rankin

I wasn't really interested in reading a series starring yet another clichéd troubled-yet-sensitive, hard-drinking detective. But I'm vacationing in Edinburgh in a few weeks' time, and I was told the city features strongly in Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels, like a character in its own right, so it seemed appropriate to read one, to set the mood for my holiday.

There's a lightness to the writing, great humour and wit, that makes it very engaging, despite the grimness of the plot. I was halfway through when I realized the novel hadn't devoted much time at all to the actual mystery of the serial killer. And that's fine — the story certainly didn't bog down in the details of police procedure. I'm curious to see how subsequent Rebus novels play out, now that the groundwork for his character has been established.

Edinburgh slept on, as it had slept for hundreds of years. There were ghosts in the cobble alleys and on the twisting stairways of the Old Town tenements, but they were Enlightenment ghosts, articulate and deferential.

I'm sold on Edinburgh — its Jekyll-and-Hyde nature and rain like judgement.

Nothing tasted better than a venial sin

Near his flat, he passed a little grocery shop outside which were stacked crates of milk and morning rolls. The owner had complained in private to Rebus about petty and occasional thefts, but would not submit a complaint proper. The shop was as dead as the street, the solitude of the moment disturbed only by the distant rumble of a taxi on cobblestones and the persistence of the dawn chorus. Rebus looked around him, examining the many curtained windows. Then, swiftly, he tore six rolls from a layer and stuffed them into his pockets, walking away a little too briskly. A moment later he hesitated, then walked on tiptoe back to the shop, the criminal returning to the scene of the crime, the dog to its vomit. Rebus had never actually seen dogs doing that, but he had it on the authority of Saint Peter.

Locking round again, he lifted a pint of milk out of its crate and made his getaway, whistling silently to himself.

Nothing in the world tasted as good for breakfast as stolen rolls with some butter and jam and a mug of milky coffee. Nothing tasted better than a venial sin.

—from Knots and Crosses, by Ian Rankin.