A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin

Published by Little, Brown and Company on October 18, 2022

John Rebus is one of the more interesting cops in crime fiction. He was never a dirty cop, but he had a bit of Dirty Harry in this approach to law enforcement. He played the game by his own rules. He used his fists to encourage confessions. He framed suspects for crimes they didn’t commit when he couldn’t prove their involvement in the crimes they did commit. No longer enforcing the law, Rebus still defies the rules when they get in the way of solving mysteries. Now there’s a risk that his history of defiant behavior will catch up to him.

Rebus always kept one foot in the underworld, the better to keep track of dirty deeds. He did not join “the Crew” at Tynesdale police station in their corrupt activities, but he once accepted a payment to introduce some bent cops to Big Ger Cafferty, Rebus’ primary underworld connection. Rebus never knew the purpose of the meeting. When he learns its purpose, he realizes the magnitude of his error.

Years later, Rebus is retired, the Crew is under investigation, and Cafferty is in a wheelchair. Cafferty hires Rebus to find Jack Oram. Popular opinion holds that Jack is dead, but Cafferty tells Rebus that he’s been sighted. Jack’s son Tommy is associated with a criminal who fronts his share of the local crime market from a bar. Rebus is always happy to carry an investigation into a bar. Rebus takes the job, not because he wants to help Cafferty but because he wants to learn what Cafferty is really trying to accomplish.

Readers can count on a Rebus novel to have an abundance of moving parts. Much of the plot revolves around Francis Haggard, a cop at Tynecastle station who has been abusing his wife Cheryl. Cheryl’s sister, Stephanie Pelham, is married to a developer who buys up land and develops expensive flats, including one that seems to be tied to both Haggard and Jack Oram. Haggard may want to rat out members of the Crew to save his own skin. It isn’t surprising that Haggard goes missing.

Cafferty is in a turf war with Fraser Mackenzie, who married Cafferty’s old flame Beth. The Mackenzies’ daughter DJs at a nightclub and might know more about crime than all the adults put together.

Ongoing subplots include Siobhan Clarke’s love/hate relationship with Rebus and Malcolm Fox’s determination to prove that Rebus broke the rules of policing. Rebus thinks of Fox as the Brown Nose Cowboy. Fox is no longer with Complaints (Police Scotland version of Internal Affairs) but he assumes Haggard’s murder is connected to bad deeds done by the crew.

Rebus is a character of satisfying complexity. Rebus cares about his daughter and is a good parent to his dog Brillo, making it clear that he has a good heart even if his mind is sometimes enveloped by dark clouds. He isn’t a tough guy (at least in his old age, when walking up a flight of stairs threatens his life). He nevertheless delivers a fair amount of snark while poking his nose in where it isn’t wanted. He occasionally suffers a broken nose for his trouble. His snooping is compulsive; if someone has a secret, Rebus wants to know it. Rebus eventually learns the truth about Jack and Tommy Oram, Haggard, the Pelhams, the Mackenzies, the Crew, the dirty bar owner, and the real reason he was hired by Cafferty.

The novel’s ending is surprising. While it isn’t quite a cliffhanger, the story leaves Rebus in a precarious position. It is a situation he brought on himself, but it is easy to feel sympathy for a guy who can barely breathe yet plods along anyway, a guy who is fed up with crime and with himself. “He’d spent his whole life in that world, a city perpetually dark, feeling increasingly weighed down, his heart full of headstones.”

This isn’t much of a review, but Rebus fans understand the importance of characterization to the series and the general sense of noir that pervades the books. I can only tell those fans that A Heart Full of Headstones meets the standard that the series has established. It is perhaps a bit darker than most and the ending is concerning, as it signals the possibility of a very dark period in Rebus’ declining years. That concern, of course, is reason enough for a fan to wait in agony until the next Rebus novel arrives.

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