Doors Open

You're just a regular guy--okay, not regular, regular because you've made a killing in the tech world--but you're youngish and you're a little bored and you have a couple of friends who have the same hobbies as you, mainly you all like fine art. Did I mention you're bored and you have a lot of money? What if one of your buddies comes up with a seemingly brilliant plan to "free" some fine art from the clutches (and locks and keys) of the local (Edinburgh) banks? Would you do it?

Husband Ben loves books about regular people who get involved in high crime. Things like Scott Smith's A Simple Plan (made into a decent movie) or Mark Bowen's real-life story of an accident involving a Brinks truck, Finders Keepers. I've passed Ian Rankin's Doors Open to Ben because I'm thinking it's right up his alley. Rankin is a good writer who happens to write thrillers--or rather, police procedurals. I've always enjoyed his Inspector Rebus books, but he retired his hard-drinking, insubordinate character in last year's Exit Music. Probably about time, too. So it was with great pleasure that I found myself deep into this one-off about Mike Mackenzie trying to pull off a bank heist (but only for art's sake, of course). How many people have been sitting around a pub (or the national equivalent) with a bunch of buddies and thought, "yeah, I could do that."? That's pretty much what Mike was doing, and what his friend Allan hoped they were doing, and then Professor Gissing pushed them to do more than speculate about it.

Turns out there's a lot to pulling off a big robbery. I will say that for all the things that go wrong (and, yeah, duh! They do go wrong-ish), Rankin makes it seem achievable. Or, I guess I should say, he makes the whole plan more or less believable. There were some scenes where my tv-inspired mind was screaming, "NO, obviously the cops will trace you when you do that!" but I was along for the ride (and wrong to worry, in a few cases). I also decided that much of police work depends on coincidence--you happen to know something about art, or you happen to have been tailing a criminal element and he runs into an art lover and then you put it all together when some art goes missing...Later, I thought this might not be true, but I bought it while I read it.
I'm glad Ian Rankin stayed in the game without having to resort to sticking his creaky old Inspector Rebus into new and increasingly unlikely scenarios.

I'm wondering if husband Ben (a software engineer himself) will recognize himself in this particular scene? One of the recessed lights in the kitchen needed replacing, too, but it was a halogen thing and fiddly to install. Mike would sometimes joke that when the last bulb fizzled out, he'd have to find somewhere else to live. This pretty much describes how Ben's office ran for years, getting dimmer and dimmer as the engineers opted to move existing lightbulbs to burnt-out areas, rather than, God forbid--purchase new ones and install them properly. For this moment alone, I bow to Rankin's knowledge of human nature among the software set.

Where You Are

This is a reread of Where You Are by George Constable, but so worth it for the mood I was in. Lake Stevenson is a tidy young old man. I have no idea how old he's supposed to be-late 20s, mid-thirties?-- but he seems perfectly content with his vaguely bacheloresque life. Content, it seems, until an elderly aunt dies and bequeaths him a stately house in the fancy part of town. Okay, that's normal enough, but there's a catch. The catch is Randall, the aunt's beloved springer who comes with the house and must remain in said house for the remainder of his days (and he's still relatively young).

Ah, dilemma, what's a tidy soul to do? Lake loves his apartment, loves his life, thinks he loves his girlfriend...Then again, accidents happen. Maybe they happen especially to small dogs whose brains appear pretty tiny.

I think I want Lake's problems even though he himself is not very likeable. He's a little prone to lying, though he claims not to do it on purpose, this embellishing--like telling someone his name is Luke Stephenson instead of Lake Stevenson. A bit awkward later when he has to confess. So, I don't want his flaws, necessarily, but I don't mind having to deal with a wealthy woman's bequeathal, even if it involves some moral quandaries (In spite of appearances and suggestions, no harm comes to any dogs in the telling of this story).

I definitely want Lake's job. He has started his own company whose sole purpose is to make directions user-friendly. Just the sort of neat and tidy job that a neat and tidy oldish young man might excel at. In my case, I just think it's an amusing line of work. There are some entertaining before and after exercises on manuals his company is redoing, but I love this scene when Lake is trying to forget his dog/house/old aunt/girlfriend troubles by immersing himself in work. Lake devoted half an hour to analyzing a booklet on worker safty in a lumberyard. It had been produced by someone in the lumber company and was riddled with problems--cryptic warnings, a blaming tone, afterthoughts. At one point a phrase seemd to link higher pay to faster work. A plaintiff's lawyer would love it.
This reminded me of the farmer I worked for a couple of years. His wife, thank goodness, ran the farm stand, because if Jake had been left to it, he would never have made money. He once put up such a dire, hand scrawled sign about the evils of peeling back his corn without first purchasing it, that we had to rip it down in the dawn hours lest he get arrested for threatening bodily harm on the wealthy customers innocently hoping for produce. Some people simply shouldn't try to explain things in writing. Or they should hire Lake Stevenson to do it for them.

In Where You Are, Lake kind of bumbles along, making mistakes of the non-written variety, failing at this and that in his personal life, offending people left and right, but you know in the end, that he will do the right thing. Whatever that may turn out to be.