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.