Doors Open, Ian Rankin

Freeing masterpieces of art from the banks and corporate vaults, that was the plan from the beginning. A plan where the boredom and art taste of an Edinburgh millionaire are the motivations under the surface, but Mike Mackenzie never lies to himself about it. Then the carefully thought plan takes a life of its own, helped with a few friends of him and the chance meeting with Chib Calloway, the mafia baron of the city who happens to be an old-time school acquaintance, already a bully then.

The scheme works like a charm, so much that he starts to envision the possibility of a life on the other side of the law, attracted by the feelings of power and almighty control of the events he’s tasted a sample of. Then things get slightly more complicated and the grasp he has of the situation loosens itself bit by bit.

The problem was in the detail. Mike has asked Allan to look for chinks in the plan’s armour, meaning he spent all his time on negatives – what could go wrong – rather than getting any sort of buzz from the adventure. Allan had been to Granton, driving past the warehouse, skirting its perimeter, noting movements and personnel, then had reported back with news of several dozen potential problems and setbacks. And, it seems to Mike, had begun believing the task to be altogether more fraught than was manageable, while Mike himself felt the opposite. Even Chib Calloway – Chib Calloway! – was bending to his will. He rubbed his spine against the driver’s seat, feeling the gun in his waistband. With a well-lit police station not fifteen feet away.

In 2012, a Scottish TV adaptation of this book has been directed by Marc Evans, starring Douglas Henshall as Mike McKenzie, Stephen Fry as Professor Gissing, Lenora Crichlow as Laura Stanton, and Kenneth Collard as Allan Cruickshank.

Doors Open (edition Reagan Arthur Books, 2008, 368 pages), written by Ian Rankin (Cardenden, Scotland, 1960), Scottish crime writer.