Doors Open

November 30, 2009
In Scottish author Rankin's intricately plotted heist thriller, software millionaire Mike Mackenzie, high-end banker Allan Cruikshank, and college art professor Robert Gissing devise a plan to “liberate” forgotten works of art from a warehouse storing the overflow from Edinburgh's museum collections. The trio commissions an art student nursing an antiestablishment grudge to paint fakes to swap for the originals, and Mackenzie's chance meeting with schoolmate Charlie “Chib” Calloway, now one of the city's most notorious gangsters, allows the group access to muscle and weapons. But cracks soon appear in the plan, with an inquisitive detective inspector, who's been on Calloway's trail for months, getting too close for comfort. Using the smalltown feel of Edinburgh to advantage, Rankin (Exit Music
) gives his caper novel a claustrophobic edge while injecting enough twists, turns, and triple crosses that even the most astute reader will be surprised at the outcome.

January 1, 2010
With Detective Inspector John Rebus (Exit Music, 2008, etc.) rusticated by mandatory retirement, Rankin offers a stand-alone about dishonor among thieves.

At 37, Mike Mackenzie has more money and time than he knows what to do with. The combination isn't certain to spell trouble, but that's the way to bet it. Having sold his partnership in a white-hot software company, Mike takes his place among Edinburgh's most bored eligible bachelors. By contrast, noted art expert Robert Gissing is far from bored; people with a mission seldom are. Prof. Gissing views himself as a freedom fighter on behalf of artworks. Too often, he insists, masterpieces are imprisoned, locked away from public appreciation in fat-cat boardrooms or neglected and half-forgotten in musty warehouses. He proposes that Mike join a liberation movement:"We'd be freeing them, not stealing them. We'd be doing it out of love." For Mike, it's a wake-up call and a siren song, and his heart races as he prepares to strike a blow. The team soon assembled includes a top-notch forger and a savvy bottom-feeder ready to supply whatever muscle is needed; clearly, not all team members are in it for the love of art. The heist is meticulously planned and carried out with impressive efficiency, but it's when the thieves fall out that the fun begins.

Not up to Rankin's best—Rebus, we miss you—but certainly entertaining.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 10, 2009
Rather than sending John Rebus over the Reichenbach Falls, Rankin consigned his sleuth in Exit Music to the morass of retirement, where he safely remains-except for one glancing aside-throughout this latest outing. The mantra here, suitably enough, is when one door closes, another opens. The result is a breezy tale that reinforces Rankin's ability to deliver a rousing good yarn. A retired dot-com wunderkind, a grouchy art professor, and a bank executive, all chums in cozy Edinburgh, idly hatch a plan to "liberate" art held in the Scottish National Gallery's industrial storage facility. The artsy milieu affords Rankin ample opportunity to have a go at the art establishment with references to Carl Andre, Banksy, and Jack Vettriano. With the looming of Open Doors Day (when normally private venues are thrown open to the public), the caper gathers great urgency and menace, as the trio enlists the aid of gangster Chib Calloway and a master art forger. Who will be the weakest link when the going turns rough? Verdict By its conclusion, only the most rabid fan will miss what's-his-name in this highly successful transitional work. An earlier version was serialized in the New York Times Magazine. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/09.]-Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2009
Mike Mackenzie is thirty-seven years old, rich and bored. Having sold his software company, he hasnt found a replacement for the thrill of high-stakes entrepreneurship; only collecting art satisfies his soul. Then barroom banter with friendsWhy should great paintings languish in warehouses when they could belong to people who properly appreciate them?suggests another pastime. Talk turns serious, and soon the unlikely thieves are ready to execute their plan, swapping originals for fakes on Doors Open Day, when nonpublic institutions offer tours. Mackenzie feels alive again, but as the number of conspirators grows to include professional criminals, the rank amateurs perfect crime begins to unravel. Fans of Rankins excellent, just-ended John Rebus series will likely be disappointed by this offering. While Rankin builds some suspense with a dogged DI named Ransome and a Hells Angel named Hatethe tension remains perfectly bearable. Mackenzie seems unfazed by the threat of jail time, characters are glib when they ought to be scared, and the tepid ending takes a page, if you will, right out of Scooby-Doo: in danger, Mackenzie buys time by explaining the plot, while the villains assist him by bloviating about how painful everyones death will be when eventually inflicted. Finally, in a novel where art forgery plays a starring role, the details of the forgery are too sketchy. We cant help but wonder if Rankin is like his character here: having retired Rebus, hes still looking for a new thrill to equal the old one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)