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Title: The Flood
Author: Ian Rankin
Narrator: Donald Pirie
Format: Abridged
Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
Language: English
Release date: 01-03-07
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Limited
Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 3 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
Mary Miller is an outcast, believed by some to have occult powers, and is the mother of a bastard son, Sandy. Mary finds herself caught up in a faltering affair with a local schoolteacher while Sandy falls in love with a strange gypsy girl. As the action moves towards a tense and unexpected climax, both mother and son are forced to come to terms with the past, in the growing knowledge that their small dramas are being played out against a much larger canvas, a drama glimpsed only in symbols and flickering images of decay and regrowth, of fire and water, of the flood.
Critic Reviews:
"It wouldn't take a Rebus to sleuth out the telltale signs of a talent in the making." (The Times)
"Full of secrets and revelations, with an atmospheric sense of time and place, it has Rankin's signature darkness." (Choice)
Members Reviews:
Inspector Rebus Does It His Way
Ian Rankin's Scottish Detective Inspector John Rebus drinks too much, smokes too much, is a loner, defies his higher-ups and the Special Branch London spooks, but has a moral compass that can't be tampered with. The G8 world leaders are meeting near Edinburgh, and Rebus is, as usual, a loose cannon, going his own way, defying orders, investigating four murders. The scenes of protest in the streets are vividly drawn and form a backdrop for the story. In this book Rebus's sidekick Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke comes into her own as a character and shares center stage. She'll be up for her own series soon.
The book at 452 pages is too long, is replete with scores of red herrings, implausible events, coincidences, and an overcomplicated plot, but Rankin is still sharp, original, almost brilliant in his storytelling--better than most crime writers out there. Rebus is "obsessed and sidelined, cranky and mistrusted." The book has wry and sardonic humor; Rebus even causes President Bush to fall off his bike during an exercise ride.
The ending is unsatisfactory. You may feel as if you've been taken for a circuitous ride to nowhere and forced to fall off your bike. We've met a lot of rogue maverick homicide cops in crime fiction like Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, but who would want to always read about a "go by the book" copper like Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford? Rankin keeps turning out clever, absorbing books about his misfit, drowning detective who's gnawing away at the bad guys on both sides of the law.
A fine crime novel, even in translation
This covers a set of interlocking events, including several murders, around the 2005 G8 Summit in Scotland. It is a fine read as a murder mystery, but much of the fun comes from Rankin's study of the darkly cynical Detective Inspector Rebus's interactions with a wide range of G8 visitors and with the local troublemakers they bring out.
I was a student at Edinburgh and I enjoy the way Rankin captures the feel of the city, not just in the physical locations but in the mood and style of the locals. Unfortunately this flow is sometimes undermined by changes made for the American edition. In several places everyday British words are replaced with jarringly out-of-place American equivalents.
If you aren't familiar with British English then these relatively minor translation changes will probably be invisible and you should happily enjoy the American edition.
