Review by New York Times Review
I love the rationale for the museum heist three Edinburgh art lovers pull off in Ian Rankin's coolly executed caper novel, DOORS OPEN (Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown, $24.99). Mike Mackenzie, a filthy rich but terminally bored software entrepreneur, convinces himself that he and his pals are performing a civic service by "liberating" some half-dozen paintings from the National Gallery warehouse where they currently languish. If you follow the logic of these self-entitled snobs - in an argument advanced by a distinguished but disgruntled scholar and quickly adopted by Mackenzie and a banker friend - it would be a mission of mercy to "help some of those poor imprisoned paintings to escape" by appropriating them and leaving forgeries in their place. Once Mackenzie enlists the professional know-how (and muscle) of a gangster named Chib Calloway, the heist goes off without a hitch. But there are so many human variables at work - from the art student who can't resist leaving a whimsical clue in his otherwise perfect forgeries to the foreign mercenary who collects a painting as debt collateral - that some loose cannon is bound to sabotage the project. There's also a certain Inspector Ransome of the Lothian and Borders Police to contend with, but you needn't bother your head about him. (Rankin certainly doesn't, even though he spoonfeeds plenty of unearned information to this weaselly detective.) In true "Ocean's Eleven" spirit, the only genuinely involving character dynamic is the one between the two principal criminal collaborators: Mackenzie, who gets a charge from committing a crime, and Chib, who discovers a new racket in fine art. Sensing in Chib "a hunger for something - knowledge, perhaps," Mackenzie wonders if the gangster "was beginning to realize just how narrow his world had become. And just maybe, Mike conceded, the same thing was happening to him." With the exigencies of the plot bearing down on him, Rankin doesn't give this relationship enough play time before the inevitable violent reversal. But the midlife career crisis theme - which applies just as neatly to other key conspirators in the art fraud, as well as the two rival detectives fighting over the case - adds a piquant touch to the usual genre conventions. The forbidden thrill of the illicit adventure also indicates something about Rankin's state of mind, now that he seems to have cut loose his brooding series hero, John Rebus, and stepped away from the gritty police procedurals that brought him fame and fortune. Maybe it's time for fun and games. Those spinal chills generated by BLACKLANDS (Simon & Schuster, $23) are partly inspired by the grim nature of the story Belinda Bauer tells in her first novel. Essentially, it's the dual character study of a young boy and a grown man drawn to each other through their separate obsessions, neither of them healthy. Twelve-year-old Steven Lamb is a lonely, sensitive child who becomes convinced that the only way to restore love and laughter to his miserable family is to find the body of his mother's brother, who went missing almost 20 years earlier at the age of 11, presumably the victim of a serial killer named Arnold Avery. After exhausting himself digging holes on the moor, Steven gets in touch with Avery himself and awakens the worst instincts of this manipulative killer, who is determined to escape from Dartmoor Prison and get his hands on the boy. For all the unnerving aspects of this appalling story, there's a certain morbid pleasure to be had from its claustrophobic atmosphere. Bauer casually mentions that in this desolate countryside "children disappeared all the time, and a few turned up dead." And some, like Steven, still feel the chill in their bones. There's precious little crime in THE BAD BOOK AFFAIR (Harper, paper, $13.9.9), the latest entry in Ian Sansom 's beguiling series about the adventures of Israel Armstrong, "a North London Jewish vegetarian liberal freethinker" who has somehow wound up driving a mobile library around "the northernmost coast of the north of the north of Northern Ireland." But while there's no crime to speak of in the town of Tumdrum, there's plenty of criminal mischief done to books and the readers of books by the leaders of this "dour, largely Presbyterian, muttering community." The most egregious offense may be the "Unshelved" book category - including beleaguered titles like "A Clockwork Orange" - that are kept out of sight lest they plant ideas in impressionable minds. Indeed, a troubled teenager disappears after signing out, from this pernicious material, Philip Roth's "American Pastoral." Israel is properly horrified and very, very amusing. James Thompson's SNOW ANGELS (Putnam, $24.95) sounds like something connoisseurs of macabre crime fiction might pounce on - the gruesome account, narrated by a tough but not unfeeling detective, of a savage murder committed against a beautiful young woman during kaamos, the polar night that descends on Lapland every winter. Some aspects of the novel are worth a pounce, especially the stark vignettes of daily life in near or total darkness. The American-born author, who lives in Finland, doesn't flinch from portraying his characters in various stages of drunkenness, truculence and madness, and some of these portraits are hard to take - harder, even, to shake. But Thompson's skills desert him when he ventures beyond these realistic set pieces, and there's nothing remotely believable about his outlandish plot. In Ian Rankin's latest novel, a bored software executive 'liberates' paintings from the National Gallery.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 17, 2010]
Review by Booklist Review
Mike Mackenzie is thirty-seven years old, rich and bored. Having sold his software company, he hasn't found a replacement for the thrill of high-stakes entrepreneurship; only collecting art satisfies his soul. Then barroom banter with friends Why should great paintings languish in warehouses when they could belong to people who properly appreciate them? suggests another pastime. Talk turns serious, and soon the unlikely thieves are ready to execute their plan, swapping originals for fakes on Doors Open Day, when nonpublic institutions offer tours. Mackenzie feels alive again, but as the number of conspirators grows to include professional criminals, the rank amateurs' perfect crime begins to unravel. Fans of Rankin's excellent, just-ended John Rebus series will likely be disappointed by this offering. While Rankin builds some suspense with a dogged DI named Ransome and a Hell's Angel named Hate the tension remains perfectly bearable. Mackenzie seems unfazed by the threat of jail time, characters are glib when they ought to be scared, and the tepid ending takes a page, if you will, right out of Scooby-Doo: in danger, Mackenzie buys time by explaining the plot, while the villains assist him by bloviating about how painful everyone's death will be when eventually inflicted. Finally, in a novel where art forgery plays a starring role, the details of the forgery are too sketchy. We can't help but wonder if Rankin is like his character here: having retired Rebus, he's still looking for a new thrill to equal the old one.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Scottish author Rankin's intricately plotted heist thriller, software millionaire Mike Mackenzie, high-end banker Allan Cruikshank, and college art professor Robert Gissing devise a plan to "liberate" forgotten works of art from a warehouse storing the overflow from Edinburgh's museum collections. The trio commissions an art student nursing an antiestablishment grudge to paint fakes to swap for the originals, and Mackenzie's chance meeting with schoolmate Charlie "Chib" Calloway, now one of the city's most notorious gangsters, allows the group access to muscle and weapons. But cracks soon appear in the plan, with an inquisitive detective inspector, who's been on Calloway's trail for months, getting too close for comfort. Using the smalltown feel of Edinburgh to advantage, Rankin (Exit Music) gives his caper novel a claustrophobic edge while injecting enough twists, turns, and triple crosses that even the most astute reader will be surprised at the outcome. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Rankin's (www.ianrankin.net) follow-up to his 17th and final Inspector Rebus novel, Exit Music (Audio Reviews, LJ 1/09)-also available from Hachette Audio and read by James Macpherson-is his first stand-alone thriller since the pseudonymously written Blood Hunt (1994). Here, retired software millionaire/art lover Mike Mackenzie enlists the aid of a banker, a distinguished art historian, an art student, and Edinburgh's leading gangster to rob the National Gallery of Scotland. Mix in a suspicious police inspector, the student's greedy girlfriend, and a particularly vicious Scandinavian thug, and the thieves find themselves in a spot of bother. Rankin offers a bit more humor here than in his beloved Inspector Rebus series; his skill at characterization remains top-notch. Macpherson varies his Scots burr depending on the given character's background, with some of the criminals having close to impenetrable accents. Fans of Rankin, heists, Edinburgh, and art history should find this entertaining.-Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
With Detective Inspector John Rebus (Exit Music, 2008, etc.) rusticated by mandatory retirement, Rankin offers a stand-alone about dishonor among thieves. At 37, Mike Mackenzie has more money and time than he knows what to do with. The combination isn't certain to spell trouble, but that's the way to bet it. Having sold his partnership in a white-hot software company, Mike takes his place among Edinburgh's most bored eligible bachelors. By contrast, noted art expert Robert Gissing is far from bored; people with a mission seldom are. Prof. Gissing views himself as a freedom fighter on behalf of artworks. Too often, he insists, masterpieces are imprisoned, locked away from public appreciation in fat-cat boardrooms or neglected and half-forgotten in musty warehouses. He proposes that Mike join a liberation movement: "We'd be freeing them, not stealing them. We'd be doing it out of love." For Mike, it's a wake-up call and a siren song, and his heart races as he prepares to strike a blow. The team soon assembled includes a top-notch forger and a savvy bottom-feeder ready to supply whatever muscle is needed; clearly, not all team members are in it for the love of art. The heist is meticulously planned and carried out with impressive efficiency, but it's when the thieves fall out that the fun begins. Not up to Rankin's bestRebus, we miss youbut certainly entertaining. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
