When Inspector Rebus retired
in Exit Music, I was a bit sad.
I had enjoyed reading the Rebus novels and now there would be no more
new Rebus novels to look out for. Of course,
there were quite a few in-between Rebus novels that I hadn’t read, but as I was
reading them as I got them, I was not too worried. But this ‘exit’ sort of put a screen over
Rebus. Rankin also appeared categorical
when he more or less said that he was done with Rebus. So that looked final then.
While the Rebus series ended
in 2007, Rankin started the Malcolm Fox series with The Complaints
in 2009. The setting was roughly the
same as was in the Rebus novels, except that the Complaints and Conduct Department,
where Malcolm Fox works, looks into complaints against police officers and the
department (and the police officers who work there) is, understandably, hated
by regular police officers. I was not so
enthused about this series and left it alone.
Then in 2012, Rebus came
back! Rankin felt that he hadn’t done
yet with Rebus and brought him back to work on cold cases in the
department. And very cleverly, Rankin merged
this Rebus re-entry novel with the Fox series.
So, Standing in Another Man’s Grave became Rebus’ ‘comeback’
novel, the 18th in the Rebus series and also the third in the
Malcolm Fox series. And thus, Fox and
Rebus merged. Rankin has written three more
Rebus-Fox novels, the most-recent being Rather be the Devil this
year (2016). I was, of course, happy with
this development and managed to read them all one by one. And now am waiting to read the recent one...
After The Complaints,
there was another standalone Malcolm Fox novel named The Impossible Dead. And now that there was this merger, I was curious
to see what transpired in the two standalone Malcolm Fox novels before Rebus
merged into the Fox stream. At that time
secondhandbooksindia.com was my regular hunting ground and I remember finding The
Impossible Dead there. I had bought
the book early this year, but did not find the time or inclination to read it,
mainly because I wanted to read The Complaints before I started on
this one. So, the novel lay unread. I recently found The Complaints
on one of the used books portals on Amazon and that gave me the incentive to start
the Malcolm Fox series. And one day, a
couple of months ago, I idly picked up The Impossible Dead to just
flip through and was shocked and surprised by what I found ...
Was this real? This was totally out of nowhere. An author-signed copy of one of my favourite
author’s books falling into my lap just like that??!! ... get outta here
... but I, being the eternal sceptic, decided to make sure and went online to
cross-verify ... and the result? As far
as I can see, the many images of Ian Rankin’s signature that I saw on the net
are similar to the one on this book ... I think that should do and I am happy
... and there are those curious questions ... who was/were the previous owner/s of this book? does the website have this information? where did this 'signature ceremony' occur? why prompted the owner to sell this book? and didn't the website chaps notice this? did the owner have to stand in a queue to get this book signed by Rankin? was the queue long .... and so on and so forth ...
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