By Ian Rankin, this was published in 2001, and is the 12th of his police procedurals featuring Detective Inspector John Rebus.

The mystery centres around a missing young woman, Philippa (aka Flip). But it's complicated by the discovery of a doll-sized coffin near the waterfall of the title (which, in turn, is near the home of Flip's parents).

Not only is this a macabre thing in itself, but it points to two past mysteries.

The first is the 17 tiny coffins that really were discovered at Arthur's Seat (just outside Edinburgh) in 1836. To this day, no-one totally knows what they're all about, but the hypothesis that's most relevant to our novel is that they commemorate the victims of William Burke and William Hare, Edinburgh's infamous murderers.

The other connection is fictional. Rebus discovers that there has been a history, over the last couple of decades, of tiny coffins turning up in places where women had either gone missing or definitely died. When Flip does indeed turn out to be dead, he wonders whether the Falls coffin is the latest in a long string of moves by a serial killer.

This is all nicely intriguing, and keeps you turning the pages. The scenario turns out to be more complicated still, of course, with more than one perpetrator in play (I guessed the identity of one, but not the other), plus a decoy coffin-planter.



The other thing that's quite engaging is the very believable interaction among the members of the police team.

Rebus himself belongs to a type we know quite well by now: He follows his instincts, and has no time for protocol; he's prone to drink and other unhealthy habits; he's wedded to the job, and can't even imagine retirement; he's brusque and no-nonsense, but kind to colleagues; he's dedicated and determined, but bolshie towards his superiors; and he's apparently attractive to women (I never quite buy that angle, and wonder if it's just the wishful thinking of male authors).

The team contains plenty of other interesting characters: Gill, the newly appointed boss, who's a little cruel in her single-minded career-consciousness; Ellen, the striver whose failure makes her bitter and self-lacerating; Grant, the striver who bends over backwards to make the most of his new opportunity; Siobhan, the Rebus-disciple who is starting to inherit her mentor's desire not to share...

The element that I think is a plot-point too many is the online game... It turns out that Flip had become a bit obsessed with solving the puzzles set by the unknown Quizmaster, the answers to which open up the next level of the game. Siobhan also throws herself into this interaction in a bid to unmask the person who pulls the strings. This strand adds a certain extra suspense, as Quizmaster has her scurrying around at his/her beck and call (and, of course, running into danger). But I think the story would have been better and cleaner without it. (This reviewer also complains that "the level of sophistication regarding technical matters sounds closer to about 1991 than 2001", but I wouldn't know about that.)

I also wasn't keen on the two close calls at the end -- when Rebus and/or his team come flying in at the last minute to save the good guys. A bit formulaic...


Rebus would have liked this...

Much more satisfying is the way Edinburgh emerges as a character in the novel. Actually, says Peter Guttridge, it's multiple Edinburghs: "The city the tourist sees, the one the romantics see and the one that Rebus sees: 'a state of mind, a juggling of criminal thoughts and baser instincts'." Silvia Mergenthal also talks about the sense of place: "In The Falls, Rebus traverses Edinburgh from New Town to Old Town and back again, and ventures into the East Lothian countryside, with its upmarket commuter residences, but also run-down 1930s council estates. Most conspicuously, though, he pays visits to institutions such as the History of Surgery Museum and the Museum of Scotland, while his colleague Siobhan Clarke has a meeting at the Botanic Gardens: all three sites are dedicated to the gathering and dissemination of knowledge, the first and third linked to New Science and Enlightenment projects, the second adjacent to what is now known as the 'Old College' of the University of Edinburgh (a building completed by architect William Henry Playfair between 1819 and 1827, only a few months before the Burke and Hare case was heard). This interest in the history of Edinburgh and, specifically, its often violent past and its legacy of crime, is another typical feature of the Rebus series."

I've been to Edinburgh only twice, both times very briefly. In 1997, I did a work training course somewhere in the vicinity (my diary doesn't record precisely where, as it's too busy talking about the beautiful grounds, the awesome food, and the big attic room that I thought had previously housed one of the maids...). En route between this glorious place and the airport, the team and I saw a little of the city ("the castle, perched high on its rock; the start of the Royal Mile; the hills beyond; the dark, grey buildings; a glimpse of the Firth of Forth"; "a lovely city [that] looks like a good place to stroll -- gracious, stone-built streets, monuments, parks..."). And in 2019, Nigel and I had lunch there, while waiting for the train south (that's Waverley station in the picture at the top). I'd love to pay another visit...

***

The whole Burke and Hare backdrop I found gruesomely fascinating. In the early years of the 19th century, Edinburgh was known as a centre of medical excellence. As one of Rankin's pathologist characters points out: "The history of surgery... is the history of Edinburgh." The problem was, though, that to understand human anatomy, you need to dissect human bodies, and there weren't enough of them. By law, you could only used the cadavers of executed criminals for dissection purposes, and supply wasn't meeting demand. Enter the body-snatchers, who would dig corpses up from graveyards, and sell them on to the anatomists. This became such a problem that the rich would put their deceased loved ones in locked iron "mortsafes" for the first six weeks after interment. If you were poor, you just had to mount guard over the graveyard...

With such a keen market, it was inevitably only a small step from stealing dead bodies to converting living bodies into dead ones... Enter Burke and Hare... In 1828, the pair were arrested in Edinburgh, and charged with the murder of an elderly Irishwoman. Hare turned King's evidence, and in return for immunity confessed to a total of 16 murders. All the victims were poor people whose bodies could be supplied to anatomists without arousing too much attention.


"Could the coffins be a substitute burial for the poor, friendless souls dispatched by the murderous pair?"

Burke was put on trial, charged with three murders, and sentenced to death. He was publicly executed in January 1829 (one of the observers being Walter Scott), and afterwards publicly dissected by Prof Alexander Monro. People who couldn't watch the dissection were given the opportunity to view the dissected body, and an estimated 25,000 took up the offer... Seriously. You could NOT make this stuff up...

Robert Knox, the anatomist who was the recipient of the Irishwoman's body, was not even called as a witness, which caused a bit of a public outcry. But he had protection: "The medical profession believed that, if Knox went down, he would take his colleagues with him. These may not have been guilty of acquiring their anatomical 'subjects' from murderers, but their sources of supply were equally suspect."

It's macabre, but as Rebus's pathologist contact points out, without the "resurrectionists" (as the body-snatchers were euphemistically known), the science of pathology could never have developed...