Ian Rankin gave his spiky however oddly likable detective John Rebus a surname referring to puzzles involving photos. So certainly one of many nuanced clues within the stage play Rankin has co-written with Simon Reade is that the case confronting Rebus is crucially a pictorial problem.
A cocktail party the cop attends with a lawyer girlfriend (platonic, he regrets) within the rich finish of Edinburgh takes place in a room so closely hung with early Twentieth-century Scottish colourists that it resembles an artwork gallery; and these work show greater than ornamental. Additionally enjoyably meta is that Rebus helps to resolve a fictional crime – set as a between-courses leisure by hostess Harriet – when an actual corpse is discovered. Rankin followers will relish a Jekyll and Hyde reference nodding again 37 years to Knots and Crosses, the primary Rebus e book, impressed by RL Stevenson’s story.
As Rebus teases the connections between a dying and 5 wealthy individuals – the hostess, her gambler husband, the lawyer and a on line casino proprietor with a a lot youthful “influencer” companion – there appears to be a deliberate nod to Inspector Goole, nemesis of the entitled in JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls. Though, given the centrality of cell phones to sleuthing and resolution, Rebus proves extra Inspector Google. Rankin and Reade’s plot is so ingeniously elusive that the printed textual content – absolutely the most costly play script ever at £18.99 for 122 pages – is, informatively if not financially, price it.
In what – given Rankin’s coverage of ageing Rebus in actual time – should sadly be thought to be late Rebus, the creator appears to be closing the partitions round his anti-hero. In a programme interview, the author teases that the twenty fifth Rebus novel, Midnight and Blue printed subsequent month, makes the policeman a prisoner, fixing an inside crime. The one room setting of the play is one other type of cell, albeit one which Rebus can depart freely via two (this once more a vital element) doorways. However, in any time or place, the Scottish cop is fascinating and Grey O’Brien performs him dark-ish, however with extra allure than different iterations. A second when he breaks unhealthy information powerfully suggests a person who has been dying’s messenger too usually.
At two 40-minute acts, this joins the small sub-set of performs that ought to have been longer however, touring till November, will heat many autumn nights.
