Detective Inspector John Rebus is a rough, fallible man. He was raised in a council estate in Edinburgh and advanced through the ranks of the police force. He is foul-mouthed, street-smart, and also a drunkard - he keeps whisky in a bottle in his desk. John Rebus has many problems in his life, including a paralysed baby daughter.
"Rebus got right up into Rough's face. Rough had backed all the way into the kitchenette, nowhere else to go."
"Rebus had been trying to blink away a hangover, which was about as much exercise as he could sustain."
"'It's ok,' Rebus told him, 'I just want a word.' The two men fixed one another with a stare. Rebus motioned for Davies to sit back down."
From these quotations we can see that Rebus is a very aggressive detective. He often resorts to physical violence and intimidation to get what he wants. Rebus is only a shade of grey away from the criminals - sometimes he is only distinguished by a police badge. He acts outside the law, even though he represents the law. For example, in 'Dead Souls,' he acts as a vigilante with his own agenda - he tries to avenge the suicide of a colleague which was brought about by the freeing of a paedophile.
Rebus is the epitome of a corrupt policeman. He thinks like a criminal and acts like a criminal. He drinks where criminals drink. However, he is an appealing character because of his fallibility. The reader can easily identify with his frailties. He gives in to alcohol too easily, for example, "as if it was the easiest decision he had ever made."
Agatha Christie said of Miss Marple: 'she was far more fussy and spinsterish than my grandmother ever was. But one thing she did have in common with her - though a cheerful person, she always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and was, with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right.'
John Rebus is also like this. He too expects the worst of everyone and is usually right. His relationship with his wife, Patience, is on the rocks. He judges that his wife only remains married to him as she doesn't want to admit 'defeat' (like him) and ask for a divorce. He is right in this judgement, which adds another pathetic edge to his character, and engages the reader's sympathy.
In conclusion, it seems hard to find more contrasting detectives than Rebus and Marple. But essentially they are the same. They are made of the same stuff. I hope to show this in the remainder of my essay.
Rebus and Marple, although similar at the core, are still products of their environment. I will explore this in the next section.
In 'They Do it With Mirrors,' the richness and opulence of the settings are masterfully created.
"A vast edifice of Victorian Gothic. A kind of temple to Plutocracy."
"The furniture was mahogony, big and solid, and the bed was a vast mahogany four-poster."
"This was unexpectedly modern, orchid in colouring and with much dazzling chromium."
However, when I read and analysed the book, the setting seemed strangely irrelevant. In my opinion, Agatha Christie's mystery would work well anywhere. Her style of crime novel does fit seamlessly in most settings – as has been shown in ‘Death on the Nile,’ and ‘Murder on the Orient Express,’ taking place respectively on a riverboat cruising the Nile, or a train carriage in the Orient.
'Dead Souls', in contrast, exposes Edinburgh as a dirty, run-down pit - the complete opposite of its polite tourist 'facade'.
"There was a row of cheap trophies above the mantlepiece: darts and pool, pub sports."
"It was a billowing three-piece suite, and assorted tables and units."
"Rebus had been born in a pre-fab but brought up in a terrace."
The world of Rebus is poor and sleazy - working class poverty - the dark belly of 'Auld Reekie'. There is no plutocracy here. Instead Edinburgh’s dirt is entwined into the storyline. The setting is an integral part of the story.
In conclusion, the setting in 'They Do It With Mirrors' could be anywhere, as the mystery or crime and its detection is the centre of the novel. In 'Dead Souls', however, the setting, Edinburgh, is completely interwoven in the narrative.
While I was studying the novels I began to think that the home towns of Rebus and Marple are perhaps similar. I compared St Mary’s Mead with Edinburgh, noticing similarities between two socially different places, and I was also able to draw more comparisons between Rebus and Marple.
For example, as Miss Marple often points out in the novels, her village and its surroundings provide examples of every character trait and evil in human nature that can be found in big cities. Thus, Marple's method of detection consists in finding parallels between life and people in St. Mary Mead and happenings in the outside world.
Rebus, on the other hand, is immersed in that evil in the big city and is, indeed, part of it. He does not have to draw a parallel. He knows the evil. In fact, he drinks with it.
Miss Marple is quite worldly in her recognition and acceptance that evil is all around us, just like Rebus. Rebus lives and breathes Edinburgh, as Miss Marple is also intimately familiar with St Mary's Mead.
Both detectives are thus basically similar as they are both products of their environment, St Mary’s Mead and Edinburgh. They again share a similiarity at their core as they both draw on their environment and experiences to solve the crime.
Another comparison can be made between the crimes in the two novels. We will see that the crimes contrast, and indeed also the detectives' detection of the crimes.
The following quotations are from ‘The Do It With Mirrors’.
"Two sharp cracks rang out - not in the park this time, but definitely behind the locked door."
"There was a thud from inside the room, and then a sound almost more terrible than what had gone before. The sound of slow, heavy sobbing."
"'I didn't mean to do it. I really must have been mad. I didn't mean to. Please, Mr Serrocold, I really didn't mean to.'"
In the novel, a boy fires two shots, misses his intended target, but a visitor in the house is shot simultaneously by someone outside the house. Miss Marple must investigate. Her only clues are the timing of the killing, and how the boy managed to so easily miss. Miss Marple questions the people in the house, and from the answers and circumstances works out a possible scenario. She then investigates some more, and the murderer is revealed.
But in ‘Dead Souls’ we see Rebus on the wrong side of the law. He
incites a gang to murder a freed paedophile. The story is not solely based on the solving of a complex crime, it instead focuses on
the feelings or imagery of this journey through Rebus’s dilemma.
So in 'They Do It With Mirrors,' the crime is a puzzle for Marple to solve. It is an intellectual exercise for the detective and the reader.
For 'Dead Souls,' and many other Rebus novels, the criminal activity is a plot device, or backdrop to the development of the character, Rebus, and his associates.
In conclusion, a murder is not at the heart of ‘Dead Souls’ (initially)- Rebus’s character is. And Marple is not the heart of ‘They Do It With Mirrors’ - the crime and its detection is.
To summarise, I found the settings in 'They Do It With Mirrors' more 'two dimensional' than ‘Dead Souls’. They provide no unnecessary distractions - almost like a stage play. In fact, Christie's novel is a timeless literary crime labyrinth - the reader initially is lost in the maze and is led not by Arachne's thread, but Miss Jane Marple's threads of logic and deduction. The puzzles are enduring.
In contrast the Rebus novels are more involving - they don’t just present the reader with an intriguing black and white crossword puzzle with a twist. Instead Rankin takes the reader deep into the text and thus into the characters’ world where the reader feels part of it all. Rankin achieves this depth through his realistic representation of the darker aspects of Edinburgh and Fife.
The basic characters of Rebus and Marple are the same, in my opinion. To paraphrase Christie, they both expect the worst of everyone and everything and are usually proved right. They are products of their environment - Marple is divorced from the corruption of the environment, however, while John Rebus is reluctantly married to it.
To conclude, the word 'rebus’ actually means 'puzzle.' The irony is, however, that although 'rebus' means 'Puzzle', the crimes in ‘Dead Souls’ are in fact not puzzling at all. Instead, Miss Marple is an enigma, she is the 'rebus' - a puzzle that solves puzzles.
I really enjoyed these books and also enjoyed analysing them for this essay. They entertained and enlightened me. I found Christie's novel intellectually satisfying, while Rebus engaged my sympathies, but both novels were ultimately a great read.
Words: 1873
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Nathan McLennan, Higher English Specialist Study
