Stonemouth by Iain Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's been so long since I read any Iain Banks that I'd forgotten just how readable his work is. Given to me as a present shortly after the author's death, Stonemouth is set in a mythical town north of Aberdeen, but in truth it could be anywhere on the east coast of Scotland. It's a story of messed-up love involving a number of young people in their mid-twenties reconvening for the funeral of a local gangster family patriarch. Slowly, as the novel unfolds, we find out what went wrong between the central character and his ex-fiancée.

As ever with Iain Banks, the novel is written in a gently humorous style which is extremely Scottish - even EAST Scottish, no obsession with sectarian issues here, although plenty of other things make it in - and yet the book seems to travel well enough that other non-Scottish readers can enjoy its subtleties, too. I suppose Roddy Doyle manages the same trick for modern-day Dublin.

So, to sum up, I loved this. It wasn't even remotely an effort to read it at any stage, and in the end I was sorry it had finished.

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Standing in Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a surprise return for Rebus, this time back in action not as a serving police officer but as part of a team reviewing cold cases. Into the bargain, Malcolm Fox from 'The Complaints' is dealt into the plot, as well as old villain 'Big Ger' Cafferty. Cafferty's contribution seems reasonable enough, but including Fox seems unnecessary, and indeed he's really only a fringe figure in this book. The reader is really only engaged with Fox because he's been the central character in other books. I'm not convinced that the inclusion of these other characters isn't mainly a device to boost sales.

For all that, Standing In Another Man's Grave is an excellent read, well-written as ever and with some really atmospheric writing about, in particular, the north-east of Scotland. There's life in Rebus yet, it seems.


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