The Rise - Ian Rankin - ★★

AUTHOR: Ian Rankin

GENRE: Short Story, Police Procedural

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A police procedural novelette about a murder investigation at an elite residential tower. Too many characters and not enough depth for a short fiction work.

Story Synopsis:

Detective Sergeant Gish has been called to investigate the murder of the concierge at The Rise, an elite residential tower and home to some intriguing multi-millionaires in London. Gish definitely has her work cut out, as the wealthy are helpful neither as witnesses nor as informants when it comes to investigating a murder.

I’m not a thriller fanatic and am very picky about the thrillers I do choose. So I have never read the works of some reputed thriller writers, Ian Rankin being one of them. I use such short stories to see if their style works for me. In this case, I was even more excited as this was a police procedural, which is among my favourite thriller subgenres. However, the execution left me disappointed. Rankin might be a great novelist, but as a short fiction writer, he didn’t impress me much.

Highlights of this work:

📌 Tagged as a short story, this is more of a novelette at 86 pages.

📌 Way too many characters and not enough character development. Gish is a decent character, but the others are flat.

📌 Even worse, the characters are clichéd. The Arab princess, the Russian oligarch, the reclusive actress, the career criminal… No imaginativeness to their backgrounds at all!

📌 The pacing is decent, as long as you can keep track of the characters.

📌 The plot feels overly complicated. There’s no smoothness to the proceedings the way police procedurals usually have. This was too ambitious and cluttered for a short.

📌 The ending was a decent one, though there are cues that indicate how that was the only ending possible. So if you pay attention, even that surprise isn’t a surprise anymore.

All in all, this was just an okay read for me. I was expecting far more from my first Ian Rankin story. But some authors are way better as novelists than as short fiction writers. I hope Rankin is one of them.

This standalone story is currently available free to Amazon Prime subscribers.