The Flood
by Ian Rankin
Orion, $217
Ten-year-old Mary Miller is pushed into a river polluted by industrial waste from a local coal mine. Pulled out by her hair in the nick of time, the young man who pushed her in dies in a mining accident a couple of days later. Mary's hair turns white with the shock and the rural community treats her with suspicion; some even whisper that she is a witch. Years later she has an illegitimate child, Sandy, and the rumour is that her brother Tom is the father. How much of this is true? How much gossip? Is she really a witch?
It's the 1960s, the place is the Scottish mining village of Carsden, and both the setting and mysterious goings-on would be perfect for that infamous hard-living, whisky-guzzling loose cannon of a detective, Inspector Rebus. And there is a link between the two: both Mary Miller's sad and twisted tale and the more-than-often errant inspector are the creations of Ian Rankin, one of Scotland's finest novelists.
What's special about Mary's tale - The Flood - is that it was Rankin's first published novel, taken up by Edinburgh University's small Polygon publishing house in 1986 when he was 25 years old. It has now been reprinted by Orion.
Rankin is upfront about the book's sexual and often self-indulgent tone. 'Fair warning,' he writes in the new introduction, 'it's a young man's book, all about the perils and pitfalls of growing up.' It's neither a 'crime novel nor a thriller', he says, 'though it contains secrets and revelations'.