Detectives and their superiors

We watched the first episode (of two) in the new Maigret series last night. Suffice to say that Rowan Atkinson proved yet again that his long-standing relationship with Mr Bean, or Blackadder doesn't mean that he can't play someone completely different and in a totally different key. He was just wonderful.

But that's not what I wanted to write about. What I would love to see is a police thriller in which the main detective isn't constantly berated by his superior for not being quick enough in solving the crime, and/or spending too much of the department's money and therefore likely to find his funding cut off at a moment's notice - because up above the superior is another superior fussing about something similar.

Not only does it bring a cliche effect to each police thriller you see, it gets harder and harder for the actor blessed with the role of the superior to make anything fresh of it. I'm not sure who the well-known actor in Maigret was who was landed with this particular role; he chose to take the repressed, struggling, man-in-the-middle approach to the part, unlike another recent British series Paranoid in which the three main detectives are continually berated by an almost frenetic superior, played by Neil Stuke, who plainly felt that the lines he was given were so pointless and minimal that he'd go all out.

It would be interesting - if not so dramatic - to see an encouraging superior just once in a while, or one who didn't turn out to be more corrupt than the criminals, or one who didn't close down the investigation before it started, and so on.

Suppose, for a change, the detective in charge of the case worried about the resources and the funding and the fact that it was taking a long time to get a result - while the superior sat upstairs eating biscuits and drinking coffee and saying to the detective: Don't worry, old boy, it'll all come out in the wash. Just wait for the last episode!

Ian Rankin

There was a Starbucks on the corner of Lothian Rd and Bread St.
He’d gone for filter, complaining that he could buy a whole jar for the price of one of the costlier options.
Ian Rankin - The Naming of the Dead - page 121

We’re been devouring Ian Rankin novels since we came to Europe. It just happened that we’d picked one up before we came, and decided to read it while we were away, one after the other, rather than carry too many books. (Jane Austin’s Northanger Abbey was the other choice.)
My wife is now on her fifth book in his Inspector Rebus series; I’m waiting for her to finish it (which means I‘ve had nothing to read - in English).
This is what we’ve finished:
Fleshmarket Close - the one we brought with us, and have now left somewhere. The Hanging Garden - we bought secondhand in Florence and then gave to someone in Barcelona. A Question of Blood - picked up in a double edition with The Hanging Garden in Florence.
Dead Souls - bought new at the Barcelona Sants railway station - the only Rankin in the English books on sale.
What’s great about Rankin as a thriller/mystery writer is that he’s literate, and doesn’t write down to his readers. It’s never annoying to read his books because of poor and hackneyed writing. There’s no formula to his books, except perhaps that he always has two investigations going on simultaneously; sometimes they connect, sometimes not, and in one or two of the books there have also been other personal and public investigations. His villains aren’t cut to any mold, and neither are his cops. Rebus’ offsider, Siobhan Clarke, may play a major or minor part in the stories. And even though some of the other officers consider Rebus a ‘dinosaur’, he usually sorts the villain(s) out, one way or the other. They may not always get convicted, but they certainly know that Rebus knows they did the deed.
Rebus himself is a dour character in some respects, though he has a great sense of wit. He’s constantly unsettled, and doesn’t sleep well. His personal relationships suffer badly from his obsession with getting his job done, and his life is often in peril because of the risks he takes. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He’s regarded as something of a rogue cop by his superiors, yet they don’t regard him as so much of one that they’ll finally cause him to quit. He’s too useful, and knows too much. Too much for his own good, in some cases, as when he’s so close to one of the villains in order to get even closer to another, that it’s almost uncertain which side he’s playing for. And he’s willing to act a part to get information that isn’t otherwise unobtainable.

John Hannah played Rebus in some of the tv versions of the books. I can't imagine someone less like the character; he's far too young, for a start.