Doors Open

Doors Open, Ian Rankin’s first stand-alone novel after putting John Rebus out to pasture in Exit Music, concerns a group of amateur art thieves who fall out with one another in the aftermath of a successful heist. In his late 30s, Mike McKenzie made a fortune from the sale of his software company but is finding the quiet life of leisure and luxury somewhat of a bore. This explains why he’s tempted when his friend, art professor Robert Gissing, describes a plan to “liberate” paintings from a storage facility where the Scottish National Gallery stashes surplus holdings. Gissing, who’s been obsessed with the idea for some time, has it all worked out. The upcoming Doors Open event—a showcase for the city of Edinburgh in which show more buildings normally closed to the public throw open their doors to all and sundry—includes the warehouse in question. Mike enlists his banker friend Allan, but the group needs talent of a less polite nature to pull off such a brazen theft. Enter gangster Chib Calloway, an old school acquaintance of Mike’s, brought on board to provide muscle and fire-power. Gissing enlists “Westie,” a student from the art college, to produce the forgeries that will replace the paintings they’re going to steal. On the day, everything apparently goes without a hitch. A diversionary tactic meant to fool police seems to have worked. Are they really in the clear? But it’s not long before cracks start forming. Mike had not accounted for the fact that Calloway, being a criminal and all, would be under police surveillance, and in the days after the theft, the dogged DI Ransome senses a connection between Calloway, his new art-loving friends, and the heist. Toss in a few complications—Calloway is up to his ears in debt to some very shady Scandinavians, Westie’s mouthy girlfriend Alice feels that her talented boyfriend’s been shortchanged—and things quickly start to unravel. Rankin serves up a complex, multi-layered and mightily entertaining plot. Mike McKenzie is an appealing anti-hero with plenty of smarts, a young man who acts rashly and gets what he deserves. But it turns out that, as the victim of a double cross he never saw coming, he’s not as smart as he thought he was. Undeniably fun, the novel lacks the moral heft of the author’s typical work. Still, Doors Open is a top-notch heist thriller by a seasoned writer who knows how to keep his reader guessing. show less

A carefully crafted heist turns into a nightmare as two friends embark in a sophisticated plot. A very slow and elaborate sophisticated plot. I did enjoy the characters, the variety in personalities, the description of the art pieces and the evolution of the story. Each piece has its place and there are no gaps left in the plot - the twists are subtle but keep the story running. The rhythm, however, is extremely slow, plodding even - there was enough material to keep me interested but not enough to keep me engrossed, and in the end, I was happy to be rid of it. A cerebral work for the even tempered reader.

Rebus is gone but the crime scene in Edinburgh goes on. And it's not just the usual criminal gangs that are pulling heists. Respectable people like an art professor and a rich software mogul and a bank executive decide that they can pull off the perfect crime. Professor Robert Gissing is about to retire but before he goes he wants to liberate some works of art that are just being warehoused by the National Gallery of Scotland. His friends Mike Mackenzie and Allan Cruickshank are intrigued but just for discussion at first. Mike is filthy rich having sold his shares in the software firm he and a friend started for lots of money. He has started collecting art but one work he will never be able to own, Monboddo's painting of his wife. Allan show more handles a lot of other people's money but never seems to have enough of his own and the idea of owning art that even his employer can't have intrigues him. When Mike runs into his old schoolmate Chib Calloway who is now a gangster the heist seems possible because Chib can provide the missing elements. They'll enter the warehouse during the annual Doors Open festival and walk off with 7 masterpieces. They'll switch these with 7 fakes and abandon the fakes in the getaway van. Professor Gissing will be called to authenticate the artworks and everything will be fine. Except of course it isn't.

Rankin hasn't lost his touch. I read this book in about a day on vacation because I just had to know how the ending came about (we're privy to the end from the very beginning). Just because Rebus isn't around doesn't mean there aren't lots of interesting characters. D.I. Ransome is as dogged as Rebus when it comes to catching a criminal and Mike Mackenzie certainly has potential for some more action. The ending even hints that there may be more to come from that quarter. show less

I usually enjoy anything that Ian Rankin writes. His long-running series featuring Inspector Rebus has been consistently good and his new series, featuring an utterly un-Rebus-like detective, is even better. So I expected quite a bit from Doors Open, a stand-alone novel. Doors Open tells the story of Mike, self-made millionaire who, having sold his company, is bored. He's started collecting art, which is fun and has made him two friends, a soon-to-retire art professor and a banker who buys art for the bank he works for. They talk about the usual things people interested in art discuss and agree that art purchased for investment and stored in vaults is an abomination. From there, there is a leap to deciding that they would be more show more appreciative owners and, after not being able to come up with a way to rob a bank, they come up with a cunning plan to rob a museum.

This is where Rankin lost me for a while. Liberating artwork from the unappreciative mega-wealthy is one thing; stealing from the public in order to own a piece of art that can then never be shared is quite another. It turned the book from a fun crime romp into something less fun, for me, anyway. Rankin turns it around, but it took me awhile to see what he was doing. In any case, the final third of the book is brilliant in it's unraveling. show less

I have thoroughly enjoyed the Rebus series over 20 years and had to read this novel. It is different to the Rebus books, lighter and less personal, but that's not a bad thing. It was a slow starter but after halfway I found it difficult to put down (always a good sign for me). I liked the characters, especially Mackenzie, although his motives for getting involved were not very believable. The ending also stretched the imagination a bit. 4 out of 5 (Rebus normally scores 4.5 to 5 for me).

I know it’s somewhat heretical but I’ve never been a fan of Ian Rankin’s most famous creation. However I do like to try other things Rankin writes, even when I suspect it’s not really my thing; a category which DOORS OPEN, being a heist tale, definitely belongs to. Happily though I found myself well entertained.

The heist in this instance involves the theft of paintings from the National Gallery’s warehouse in Edinburgh. The thieves are a Robert Gissing, a professor and curator; Mike Mackenzie, a software millionaire who is a little bored with life and Allan Cruikshank, a banker. The three friends decide, almost on a whim, to relieve the gallery of a few of its undisplayed works during the annual ‘Doors Open’ day when show more various institutions around the city offer public tours. During their planning, which includes adding a weed-smoking art student who specialises in copying famous works to their number, they realise they need a bit more infrastructure and so enters Chib Galloway, a former schoolmate of Mike’s and a local petty crook. The heist itself occurs about halfway through the novel and the rest of the book depicts things going rather horribly awry.

The novel’s plot starts strongly offering a more believable heist than most in that it doesn’t involve a load of fanciful technology and the motivations for the three friends are also credible. That doesn’t mean the reader doesn’t question the sense of their plan (could a painting that’s only a few days old ever fool anyone for more than a moment that it is an old masterpiece for example?) but it’s not difficult to imagine three blokes of a certain type talking themselves into carrying out this kind of hair-brained scheme. And even when things start to unravel I stayed with them, accepting that one of them would fall apart when the reality of what they’d done hit home and that someone else might get greedy after the event. But by about the three-quarter mark, when the Viking thug called Hate and the policeman not assigned to the investigation but butting in because he could made their presence felt, I’d lost my capacity to suspend disbelief. These elements felt like over-the-top nonsense but they weren’t quite ridiculous enough to take the book into full blown comedy caper territory so, for me anyway, it ended up in a kind of no-man’s land of awkwardness.

There are a lot of characters in DOORS OPEN and it’s a fairly short book so none of them is terribly well fleshed out and quite a bit of what we ‘know’ about them relies on our understanding of certain stereotypes. That said there is some genuine black humour in some of the dialogue between the characters and the references to other, more famous heist tales are nicely done.

As someone who is a bit fed up with genre publishing’s current conservatism, manifest most starkly in its capacity to push series well beyond the point where they cease being creative, I have to applaud the decision to publish something like DOORS OPEN. It’s not a perfect novel but it is pretty entertaining and full of genuine surprises right to the end. show less

The National Gallery of Scotland is home to many treasures of the art world. Painting, sculpture, drawings -- there's so much of it in the collection that not all of it can be displayed in the gallery. Instead, it sits in the Granton warehouse, which is off-limits to the public. For impassioned art lovers such as software maven Mike Mackenzie, First Caledonia Bank employee Allan Cruikshank, and art professor Robert Gissing, it's a crime to have the art languishing in such an unloved state. So why not commit another crime and liberate them?

This is a very fun heist caper, reminiscent of Ocean's Eleven and Reservoir Dogs (minus Quentin Tarantino's brand of graphic violence) -- the movies are even name-checked in the story. Newly minted show more "gang leader" Mike Mackenzie is the main focus of the story as he settles into his role and discovers that he might have a taste for this sort of life. Or at least he is the most prominent character. The main "character" is Edinburgh itself -- given that the heist involves the property of the National Gallery of Scotland. Rankin's sense of place is excellent in this book and will seriously tempt the reader to jump on a plane and go (in the meantime, you can see the gallery's offerings, or rather all three National Galleries' offerings, here). The story is evenly paced and is very satisfying to read. If you're a fan of Rebus, you may regret that he isn't here for this story, but everything else that makes a Rankin book enjoyable is here. And if you haven't tried Rankin before, this is a good way to get a feel for his style and explore Edinburgh as portrayed in his pages. show less