KNOTS & CROSSES
Things aren’t going well for John Rebus, a Detective Sergeant when we first meet him: he’s smoking and drinking too much as he smarts from the break-up of his marriage to Rhona, who has taken their daughter Sammy with her to London. And work is a trial, as someone is seizing and killing young girls and taunting the police with their deaths, as a journalist becomes intent on exposing Rebus as being implicated in his brother Michael’s drugs scam.
And after a series of peculiar letters, each containing some knotted string and a tiny cross made of matches, arrives at his home Rebus’s antennae begin to twitch uncontrollably. Although this could be more because he’s heading for a physical breakdown that necessitates a brief hospital sojourn. But it’s only after someone phones in with an acrostic clue that the game starts to unfold, and Rebus realises that this series of murders is in fact intensely personal: the direct result of an SAS training exercise many years earlier that went disastrously wrong. Even worse, Sammy’s life is now in peril as part of a frantic contest played out in the network of foetid tunnels that lie beneath the streets of Edinburgh. Ian Rankin intended Knots & Crosses to be in part a reworking of the classic Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, with an additional nod towards the real-life Edinburgh character Deacon William Brodie, a gentleman by day but a criminal by night. In this debut, already many of the themes appear that will be expanded on in later books: the grimy underside of Edinburgh; Rebus isolated and ill at ease as he remains dogged in his determination to track down a variety of troublesome killers, characters who will return in later novels. But scant reviews and modest sales of Knots & Crosses did little to suggest how popular Rebus would become.
Discussion points for Knots & Ctosses
In what ways does Knots & Crosses reveal the passage of time since it was written?
Rebus’s relationship with his brother Michael isn’t easy; is this a metaphor for the difficulties Rebus faces regarding other sorts of ‘brotherhood’, such as within the police force or the army?
Ian Rankin refers several times to ‘practical jokes’; in Knots & Crosses how does he explore themes of jokes, games and linguistic trickery?
Are the skills of journalist Jim Stevens mirrored by those of Rebus? Do the two men respect the similarities between them? And what do they each feel about drawing close to the ‘big fish’? Does the act of reading a crime story put the reader in a similar role to that of either detective or investigative journalist and, if so, in what way?
What contrasts does Jim Stevens make between ‘old-fashioned’ crime, such as the ‘families’ of 1950s Glasgow gangsters, and the ‘new’ crime wave, such as drug-dealing? And which does he favour?
What do you make of Rebus’s behaviour towards the woman he picks up at the Rio Grande Bingo Hall?
‘Was nothing arbitrary in this life?’ Rebus wonders. ‘No, nothing at all. Behind the seemingly irrational lay the clear golden path of the design.’ Consider how even in his debut novel Ian Rankin explores this notion.
Are there any signs remaining that Ian Rankin toyed with the idea of killing Rebus off at the end of Knots & Crosses?
If Ian Rankin had envisaged Knots & Crosses to be the opener for the lengthy and detailed series the Rebus books were to become, how could he have allowed his plotting to draw to a close in a more open-ended manner? And might this have made the narrative stronger ultimately?
Title Page Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
Part One - ‘THERE ARE CLUES EVERYWHERE’
Chapter 1 Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part Two - ‘FOR THOSE WHO READ BETWEEN THE TIMES’
Chapter 7 Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Three - KNOT
Chapter 13 Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part Four - THE CROSS
Part Five - KNOTS & CROSSES
Chapter 23 Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
EPILOGUE Acknowledgements
READING GROUP NOTES
KNOTS & CROSSES