http://www.scottishreview.net/AndrewHook256.shtmlIn their different ways, James Robertson and Ian Rankin are two of our finest contemporary novelists. In terms of convention of course, they are not the same kind of writer.
Robertson, author of four highly-regarded novels, is identified as a 'literary' author – which means he is seen as a novelist writing within the cultural mainstream of English and Scottish fiction. Rankin, on the other hand, author of over 20 novels, is identified as a 'genre' author – meaning he is regarded as working within the boundaries (or expectations) of one specific kind of novel: in Rankin's case detective fiction. (The Inspector Rebus series ended after 17 appearances.)
Robertson and Rankin both write to entertain the reader, but in Robertson's case entertainment can involve seriousness of purpose, the imaginative illumination and interpretation of human experience in all its forms. Rankin has above all to satisfy the reader's expectations of the detective fiction genre: crime of some kind has to be committed, investigated, and finally resolved. If the genre writer has anything to say about the complexities of life and experience, it has to be achieved within the limits imposed by the genre's requirements.
Of course I recognise that the divide between the two kinds of writing can come under pressure. We live at a time when we are regularly told that the old barrier between high culture and pop culture no longer exists – that in such art forms as music, dance, painting, and cinema, such traditional discrimination survives only as cultural snobbery. In terms of literature, however, genre writing for whatever reason continues to be seen as existing; all bookshops keep separate shelves for 'crime', 'sci-fi', 'horror', 'chick lit' etc.
James Robertson’s 2011 novel 'And the Land Lay Still' (which I have praised here on a previous occasion), provides us with a wonderfully detailed but panoramic sweep of social and political change in Scotland between 1955 and 1995. As part of his analysis of that political change, Robertson charts the ups and downs of the Scottish nationalist movement throughout the period. This leads him to create characters who emerge from the shady world of semi-official counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. Their interest is in the surveillance and even penetration of fringe nationalist groups, which, unlike the SNP itself, believe in what they call direct action. However small and unrepresentative, such groups certainly did exist within the nationalist movement, and few would doubt today that Special Branch, for example, did take an interest in their existence. Key to Robertson’s account of this problematic episode in Scottish political history is the case of Willie MacRae.
Some readers – I suspect not too many – may recall the MacRae case. MacRae was a Glasgow lawyer with a long history of involvement in nationalist politics. He had been an SNP parliamentary candidate on several occasions. He had a considerable reputation as a political activist, campaigning effectively on the issue of the disposal of nuclear waste in Scotland. There is some suggestion that he was a member of the direct action Siol nan Gaidheal group. Robertson doesn't think he was an actual member, but suggests he sympathised with such groups and knew 'where they were coming from'.
Another of these groups, the so-called Scottish National Liberation Army, insisted that MacRae, if not a member, was a supporter and a source of funding. In any event, in April 1985, MacRae crashed off the road in his Volvo car between Fort William and Dornie, where he had a holiday cottage. Taken to hospital in Inverness, and transferred to Aberdeen, he died without ever regaining consciousness. The exact circumstances of his death have remained an issue ever since. A host of questions surrounding his accidental death/ suicide/ murder are still disputed. Unsurprisingly, the theory that MacRae was the victim of some form of state-sponsored conspiracy is widely believed.
Robertson uses the historical reality of MacRae's death to lend credibility to the existence and behaviour of his characters who are linked to the murky world of counter-terrorism agencies and their possible involvement in this controversial area of Scottish politics. We never know for sure that Robertson's imaginary character was responsible for MacRae's death. But recognition that MacRae was a real person who did die in questionable circumstances moves this section of Robertson's complex novel out of the world of Gothic mystery and into the mainstream of the Scottish story he is telling.
Robertson doesn't mention the case of Hilda Murrell, the 78-year-old anti-nuclear campaigner who died a year before MacRae in circumstances which have led conspiracy theorists to link the two cases over the issue of possible MI5 involvement. (Michael Mansfield, the well-known human rights lawyer, is currently asking for a fresh police investigation into Hilda Murrell's death.)
Should there be a demand for a new investigation of Willie MacRae's death, Ian Rankin might well be among those supporting it.
Rankin's latest novel, 'The Impossible Dead' (2011) belongs of course to the post-Rebus world. Its main character is Malcolm Fox, who heads 'the Complaints' – detectives whose job it is to investigate allegations of police corruption or improper behaviour. The novel opens in fairly leisurely fashion as the bad behaviour among the Fife constabulary that 'the Complaints' are investigating does not seem of great interest. The unresolved suicide or murder of a retired officer, however, changes everything, and Malcolm Fox's investigation enters new and more dramatic territory.
The dead officer turns out to have been re-investigating the case of Francis Vernal, a politically-active lawyer, who had died in problematic circumstances in his Volvo car in 1985. Vernal had been involved with the (historical) Dark Harvest Commando, a fringe nationalist group campaigning in 1981 for the decontamination of Gruinard Island which had been used for the testing of an anthrax biological weapon. Fox finds himself drawn more and more into an exploration of the Vernal case – which, despite the change of location to Fife, emerges in every detail as being modelled exactly on the narrative once again of the historical Willie MacRae.
In the end, the Vernal/MacRae story becomes what 'The Impossible Dead' is about. In James Robertson's novel, the MacRae material is linked to what becomes only a disturbing sub-text of its comprehensive Scottish narrative. And Robertson offers the reader no final answer to the issues involved in MacRae's life and death.
The presumably coincidental use of the same material in 'The Impossible Dead' (both authors must have been working on their 2011 novels at more or less the same time) is very different. Rankin here is on excellent form, writing at a level as high or perhaps higher than in his hugely successful past. But inevitably the mechanics of the genre of detective fiction remain in play. Inspector Fox finally successfully unravels the mystery of the Vernal case. Readers may well disagree over the implications of the novelist's solution. Its political dimension is not really explored. Perhaps Ian Rankin did not fancy sailing far into such choppy waters.
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