The Impossible Dead

The Impossible Dead

Author	Ian Rankin
Language	English
Genre	Detective novel
Publisher	Orion Books
Publication date	13 October 2011
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	384 pp
ISBN	0752889532
Preceded by	The Complaints

The Impossible Dead is a 2011 novel written by the Scottish author Ian Rankin. It is the second novel in the Malcolm Fox series.

Plot

Inspector Malcolm Fox and his team from the Lothian and Borders Police department of “Complaints” (Professional Ethics and Standards), Tony Kaye and Joe Naysmith, are assigned to an investigation in the town of Kirkcaldy in Fife. Detective Sergeant Paul Carter has been found guilty of misconduct, and Fox’s job is to reassure the Fife Constabulary that the other Kirkcaldy police are clean. Fox visits Paul’s uncle Alan Carter, who had reported Paul, and is drawn into the murder investigation when Alan is killed and Paul is framed for it. Fox and his team must dodge, while exploiting as sources, not only the hostile Kirkcaldy police but contingents of Fife headquarters CID, Murder Squad, and even an emissary from London’s Special Branch.

When Fox visited him, Alan Carter was investigating the suspicious 1985 death of an Edinburgh lawyer named Francis Vernal,^[1] who was involved with Scottish Nationalist paramilitaries in the 1980s, including Dark Harvest, a terrorist group trying to use anthrax. Fox becomes obsessed by Vernal’s story, in part because there are similarities between Vernal’s death and Carter’s murder. He interviews various former associates of Vernal, including his onetime law partner, his widow, a madman, a TV personality, and a Chief Constable who is herself trying to deal with a group of terrorists. Eventually Fox identifies the person who killed both Vernal and Carter, but Fox has to risk his own life to capture them.

Structure and Place in Rankin’s Novels

The novel takes place over about three weeks. Most of the investigations are in Fife, but the team returns to Edinburgh every night. Interwoven with the investigations is Fox’s relationship with his father and sister, marked by his father’s suffering a stroke.

This is the second of Rankin’s novels to feature Malcolm Fox as the sole protagonist, following The Complaints.^[2] He is a minor antagonist (with very little attention to his point of view) in Standing in Another Man's Grave, the novel which follows, where John Rebus is the main protagonist. In the novel after that, Saints of the Shadow Bible, Fox and Rebus work together on a case and come to respect each other.^[3]

References

1. Vernal’s career and death are very loosely derived from those of activist Willie McRae, whose 1985 death was the subject of calls for new investigation in 2010; "Call for new probe of SNP activist Willie McRae's death,” BBC News 1 November 2010. This in turn inspired Ian Rankin in constructing The Impossible Dead; "Interview: Ian Rankin, Author,” The Scotsman, 7 October 2011; see also "Top crime writer Ian Rankin tells of the 1985 murder that inspired his new book,” Oxford Mail, 21 October 2011
2. In Chapter 37, a forensics officer uses the term “wooly suits” to refer to uniformed police, a term which John Rebus used but Fox does not recognize; she explains “There was a DI who used to call them that.” This would be the only reference to Rebus (if it is such a reference) in The Impossible Dead.
3. Ian Rankin discusses Fox's role in these two novels and the fan reaction to Fox's role as antagonist in Standing in Another Man's Rain, in a video interview from September 2013, SAINTS OF THE SHADOW BIBLE: Rebus and Malcolm Fox