Doors Open
by Ian Rankin

Release Date: 16th Sep 2008
Publisher: Orion
ISBN: 978 0 7528 9070 8
RRP: £18.99

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Stealing artwork made so easy amateurs can do it...

The first standalone novel by Ian Rankin for a decade, Doors Open comes with a lot of expectation and considerable anticipation... perhaps this would explain why it trips and falls to the ground with a dull thud.

Mike Mackenzie is a millionaire going through a mid-life crisis fuelled by the tedium of his monotonous life and has recently discovered artwork as a means of investment. Allan Cruikshank is just another bank drone employed to pander to the whims of the bank's High Net Worth clients, who also has an appreciation of art. Professor Robert Gissing is head of Edinburgh's College of Art and is perpetually carping about corporations owning beautiful painting as mere collateral. Three men with little to nothing in common save for their passion (or mild interest) in art.

When the professor proposes offhandedly that there is a way the three of them could "free" artwork stored by the museum, the idea immediately appeals to the bored millionaire. The seed planted, the idea quickly grows into a fully planned heist that seems foolproof, if somewhat more complex than originally planned after Mackenzie gets local gangster, Chib Calloway, involved. And how does Mackenzie know Chib - from school of course, where else?
Whilst the heist itself seems to go ahead successfully, with the swapping of fakes for the originals - unfortunately (and somewhat inevitably), things just fall apart shortly afterwards.

Rankin does successfully play on the insecurities and weaknesses of each of the characters and whilst individually they are realistic enough, their relationship and the concept of these rather benign men planning and carrying out a heist is not. Even with the unlikely help of an on-his-way-out gangster. But it isn't enough and whatever strengths the novel does have dissolves instantly with the incredibly poor and predictable ending. Disappointing.

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