Complicity by Iain Banks

[Sally Ann Melia]

I have read all of Iain Banks' books and I read this book when it was first published in 1993.

This novel is perhaps the most predictable of Iain Banks novels since it is a tale a serial killer, and was published very much in the era of Silence of the Lambs.

Complicity tells two tales one of Cameron Colley, a journalist on a Scottish newspaper called The Caledonian, and in chasing after a 'scoop' finds himself drawn to strange locations all over Scotland.

The second story is of a number of horrific murders, and while I do not want to say much of the plot, inevitably these two tales wrap around each other like snakes and come to a common and unexpected conclusion.

This is a very good serial killer story and the murders are creative but never overly gruesome or horrific to read about. It has a really good twist in the tale which makes you go 'hah!' and really sit up and pay attention as to how the book resolves itself.

I have read it several times, and have always been compelled from the front cover to the back page, so highly recommended.

 

[Vertigo]

Here are my thoughts on this one (and a question for anyone who has read it already):

Yet another Banks book that I found both a great read and an intriguing one. It is a convoluted thriller that plays on the entangled lives and feelings of guilt of the protagonists. There are two threads to the book; one from the point of view of Cameron Colley, a ‘gonzo’ journalist of a fictitious Scottish newspaper and the other from the point of view of an anonymous serial killer. The book spends most of its time with Colley; the serial killer scenes presenting only the somewhat gruesome yet grimly funny murders themselves (typical dark Banks humour).

In Colley’s story the gonzo aspect is stressed a number of times with several references to ‘St Hunter’ suggesting, along with the first person narrative used and the various substances abused, an ‘unreliable narrator.’ Despite his many failings Colley is not hard to empathise with as he is so very human about them. His memories however keep hinting at and skirting around dark and terrible skeletons in his past. The serial killer’s story is contrasted by being narrated in the second person which places the reader quite disturbingly inside the killer’s head.

How these two stories become entangled and eventually resolved is the meat of this book. Along the way, however, Banks, as is typical in his mainstream work, is not shy of proselytising his socialist and pacifist views, possibly just a little more strongly than I have seen in his other books I have read. It’s a difficult one this as, in the context of this book alone, it is not really too much but in the context of all his books I am beginning, despite essentially agreeing with most of his views, to find I’ve heard it all before from him. Sad, but there it is.

Without doubt I found this another page turner and the twist towards the end was sufficiently obfuscated to make it unexpected. However the ending itself I found rather weak and a bit of an anti-climax. Though I am wondering if I have missed something. So I have a question for anyone else who has read the book and might care to leave a comment. I should add that, whilst the question is not really a spoiler, my own tentative answer and anyone else’s answers are certainly going to be.

Spoiler

My question is: what was the final chapter all about? To give the question context, as mentioned above, all of Cameron Colley’s parts are written in the first person and all of the serial killer’s parts are written in the second person. But the final chapter is written from Cameron Colley perspective but it is in the second person. I’m wondering if the suggestion is that, having allowed the killer to get away, Colley has become so complicit (it is the book’s title after all) in the killings that his story has effectively merged with the killer’s. I would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on that one.