Black & Blue

Background

Black & Blue is considered by the author to be his breakthrough novel. The previous books were well-reviewed, but sales had continued to be modest. Writing was now his main income; he and his wife had two young sons, one of whom had been diagnosed with special needs. Rankin says of this period in his career: I was angry and bewildered, suffering panic attacks and wondering if I was going to have to jack it all in and get a proper job. Instead, I channelled everything into Black and Blue. I had been reading a lot of James Ellroy, and it shows. I turned to his staccato style, and decided that, like him, I could people my world with real crimes, real villains and real mysteries. I had ended my apprenticeship and felt I knew the inside of John Rebus’s head, knew what made him tick.Rankin also says that Black & Blue is the first novel in which he consciously added a large amount of (sometimes invented) slang, for instance, "biscuit tin," meaning a police interrogation room, and "woolly suit," meaning a police constable.

Plot summary

Detective Inspector John Rebus is working on four cases at once trying to catch a killer he suspects of being the infamous Bible John. He has to do it while under an internal inquiry led by a man he has accused of taking bribes from Glasgow's "Mr Big". TV journalists are meanwhile investigating Rebus over a miscarriage of justice. Rebus travels between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen and then on to Shetland and the North Sea.

Full summary

Set in Scotland around the mid-1990s, Black & Blue focuses on Detective Inspector Rebus. Transferred to Craigmillar, Rebus is investigating the Johnny Bible case. (The spree of recent killings bears a striking similarity to the factual "Bible John" case of the late 1960s.) Rebus resolves an ambiguous incident with his colleague Brian Holmes, regarding the alleged assault on the criminal Mental Minto. He becomes involved in investigating the brutal death of Allan Mitchison. At home, Rebus is fascinated by the Bible John killings, and studies them off-duty through old newspapers and reports. Rebus had also worked on the Spaven case with a former boss, Geddes; despite having arrested Spaven and found him with the victim's handbag, Rebus (and the press) are not convinced that the evidence wasn't planted. Spaven had continued to protest his innocence, including in a best-selling biography, before committing suicide in prison.

Rebus starts investigating Mitchison's death, while assigning Holmes to research Geddes’ notes in the Spaven case, to return the favour for resolving the earlier incident with Minto. Suspecting Tony El of murdering Mitchison, Rebus puts out his description before heading to Partick to see Joseph Toal, a local crime boss who used to employ Tony El.

The book switches to Bible John's viewpoint, who arrives in Scotland, apparently to pursue Johnny Bible, whom he calls "the Upstart". Investigating libraries, Bible John starts tracing anyone who has researched him. In Partick with CI Ancram and an old friend, DI Jack Morton, Rebus continues investigating Johnny Bible, and calls on his relationship with Cafferty, a gang lord in Edinburgh now behind bars. Because of his respect for Rebus despite his being a police officer, Cafferty arranges a meeting for him with Uncle Joe, where Rebus learns that Tony El is no longer working for Uncle Joe and apparently headed south. After a dispute with Ancram, Rebus heads back home. After meeting with Gill Templer, Rebus attempts to visit one of his colleague's snitches, only to find him dead in the canal.

In an attempt to satisfy the press, the police open an inquiry into the Spaven case, and bring Rebus in as he is the only surviving person to have been closely involved. Attempting to stall talking to them, Rebus heads to Aberdeen, meeting DS Lumsden and asking about the Tony El/Mitchison case. After meeting Minchell and Major Weir, Rebus accompanies Minchell to the North Sea Conference where, after getting past the protesters, he meets an oil executive called Ryan Slocum. The latter is talking about the oil industry's being bought up by United States interests.

Allusions

The title refers to the Rolling Stones album Black and Blue. :Black and blue" is also another name for bruising; Rebus gets roughed up several times during the novel.

As Rankin states in the foreword to the novel, the title also alludes to oil and policemen: black for the oil and blue for the cops.

Rankin presents a fictional version of the Dancing Pigs, a punk band for which he sang when he was 19. They lasted only a year and were not very successful. He states that he especially enjoyed making them successful in this novel.

Reception

The novel was well-received: Kirkus Reviews praised Rankin's "dexterity" as well as his "poet's grace," and Publishers Weekly called it: "rich in character and incident."

It won the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger award