#Rankin.Next hero of Rankin - Malcolm Fox from Complaints police.

‘How can you do it? How can you spit (to force out the content of your mouth, especially saliva) on your own kind?’ (The Complaints)

Ian Rankin admits that by setting the Rebus novels in real time, he had placed himself in a straightjacket (anything that severely confines and constricts). In Scotland, detectives must retire at 60, so at the end of ‘Exit Music’ in 2007, Rebus has his retirement dinner and heads off into the sunset… or rather to the cold cases unit staffed by retired Lothian and Borders detectives.

After some time away from novel writing, Ian read a newspaper article about the Complaints and Conduct department of a UK police force; he was intrigued. These were cops that investigated other cops – Internal Affairs, and they were universally disliked and feared by their fellow officers. They operated as spies on the inside, setting up surveillance, following the rules to the letter – and making enemies that they would then have to work with again in the future. They were chosen from the regular police force but would have to have a particular mindset to do the job and be slow, cautious and meticulous (very careful and with great attention), in other words the direct opposite of Rebus. Ian wangled (to succeed in doing something) an interview with an ex-Complaints officer to find out more and it whetted (to increase someone’s interest in and wish for something) his appetite to create a new character, still very much at the heart of the Edinburgh police scene but an ‘outsider’. What if he took a cop from Complaints and turned his life inside out – making him the victim of an investigation, forcing him to cross the line, take action and break the rules? And so Malcolm Fox was born.

The first Fox book is called simply, ‘The Complaints’. At the time of writing it, everyone in Edinburgh seemed to be voicing some complaint or other; if it wasn’t rumblings (a continuous low sound, sign of anger) about the roadworks surrounding the tram reinstatement, then it was the crisis with the banks or even just the awful weather. Fox is not ‘Rebus lite’, he is his own man and very different to rebus psychologically. He is hardworking and pernickety (giving too much attention to small details that are not important); a team player, not cynical like Rebus, and not a drinker. Long teetotal (never drinking alcohol), he is an interesting character who is somewhat repressed: he is divorced, has a difficult relationship with his father who is in a care home, and he and his sister are distanced. In fact it is when his sister’s boyfriend is murdered and Fox himself becomes a suspect that his world implodes: the hunter becomes the hunted. In ‘The Complaints’ and the next Fox book ‘The Impossible Dead’, Fox is established as a very likeable hero – one of the good guys, but this changed in the subsequent book.

‘Standing in another Man’s Grave’ saw Rebus return, the age for retirement raised and Rebus with the chance of re-applying for his old job. But would he be seen as a fit applicant by ‘The Complaints’? Fox investigates the skeletons that come rattling put of Rebus closet. Thus Ian’s two main characters meet on page, and Fox becomes the villain (a character that harms other people) of the piece, the antagonist: his priggish (a person who obeys the rules of correct behaviour) morality trying to block the maverick Rebus at every turn. ‘I know a cop gone bad when I see one. Rebus has spent so many years crossing the line he’s managed to rub it out altogether.’ (Standing in another man’s grave)

Ian turns this on its head in ‘Saints of the Shadow Bible; Fox and Rebus are forced to work together, and gradually come to an understanding of what makes the other tick in such a way that there is a grudging empathy between them. Fox is rehabilitated for the reader, and Rebus is back on the force, with Fox not far behind him.