Beggar's Banquet

This anthology of crime wins on both quantity and quality, and is truly an excellent value. Not every story is a revelation--a couple are even slightly cliched, and the Christmas one is slightly cheesy, although better executed than most of that nature. This is far outweighed by the number of gems in this volume--I particularly enjoy "Herbert in Motion"'s unusual narrator and concept. "Talk Show" is another favorite. All of the stories are enjoyable. Only a few of the tales are stylistically different from the rest. His strength is good old-fashioned quality story-telling, with an excellent sense of setting, interesting characters, and usually good plotting. Overall, this is truly the most satisfying short story collection I have encountered. (Please don't buy it if you don't like short stories in general--the stories are still limited by their form. A character can't be well-developed in 20 pages, no matter the quality of the characterization.) All the stories take place in Scotland, and seven of the twenty-one stories feature Inspector Rebus. I never read Rankin before, so I found the chronology of Rebus's personal life confusing, even after looking up the publication dates of the stories. Each story stands alone, with no prior knowledge of Rankin's other books needed. An introduction, with some illumination of the origins of some of the stories is provided. Both "A Deep Hole" and "Herbert in Motion" won Daggers for best short story. "A Deep Hole" was also shortlisted for the Anthony award.

I've been a Rebus fan for several years now, so I happily purchased this book when I spotted it in an Edinburgh bookshop. I happened to be travelling from the States, so I had the additional pleasure of reading the book while surrounded by the locations where the short stories are set. Unlike many authors of novels, Rankin also excels in the short story form. In addition to seven Rebus short stories (a couple of which could have easily been stretched into novels), I particularly enjoyed many of the non-Rebus stories. In particular "Someone Got to Eddie" (an informant is killed), "Principles of Accounts" (a professional kidnapper matches wits with the police), "Herbert in Motion" (the curator of a museum forges paintings) and "The Wider Scheme" (a solicitor becomes involved in the hunt for a murderer). I certainly hope Rankin keeps up his short story writing and that there will be additional collections in the future.