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Ian Rankin is very good. But one question dances in front of me every time I open his latest novel: Is he that much better than everyone else? His sales, reviews, honours and reputation suggest that he is.

Can it be possible?

This year's novel, The Complaints, is set in Edinburgh, as usual, but has a new character, who looks a fair bet for a series. He shares much with John Rebus, who lived in real time and so retired after about 18 novels. Like Rebus, Malcolm Fox is divorced, depressed, decent and devoted to alcohol. Unlike Rebus, Fox has given up drink. He has been sober a long time, but he still fantasizes about the taste of single-malt whisky and the burn of vodka as it goes down the throat. He even tempts himself with the idea that on a day when his resolve is strong, he could manage a single drink without putting himself back in the devil's clutches.

The Complaints, by Ian Rankin, Orion, 381 pages, $24.95

Again like Rebus, Fox is hated and feared by the crooks around him.

Underlining this, his job is in the PSU, the professional standards unit, investigating serious allegations about other police officers.

Having completed a case against one Glen Heaton, he is asked to look into a much younger detective from the same force, Jamie Breck, whose name and credit-card details have surfaced in a child-pornography inquiry.

At the same time, Fox is worried about his sister, who is still a drinker and whose partner, Vince, almost certainly beats her up. He keeps his distance from both of them while he can, concentrating his family feelings on his father, a widower, who lives in an expensive retirement home. In spite of his saviour role in the novel, Fox resents the cost of his father's sanctuary, while never for one moment thinking of stopping the cheques. He also reassures his father whenever the old man raises the question of the home's fees. The two of them ring absolutely true.

Jamie Breck is another interesting and credible character, much younger than Fox, just as intelligent and nearly as cynical. His relationship with a woman officer could just be cover for his pedophile activities, and he definitely finds pleasure and satisfaction in his computer. He is a passionate gamer, with an avatar in whose heroics he can lose himself and ease the frustrations of his professional and private lives. Fox recognizes that his own addiction to alcohol once offered the same escape.

“ If the point of crime fiction is to make you think while entertaining you ... then Ian Rankin definitely does it better than most ”

If I knew more about computer games, I would almost certainly have spotted more subtleties in the connection between that art form and Rankin's novel. As it is, the principal link is clear: Who we are in reality is very different from the roles we take on to please, satisfy or stymie ourselves and others. Breck's various roles offer tantalizing options for the reader.

Fox's true identity is never in doubt, even when his sister's brutish partner is found murdered. Others may suspect Fox of involvement, but we know he couldn't have had anything to do with it. To underline his innocence, Rankin offers a scene in which his hero is punished for upsetting the powerful criminals he is determined to unmask.

Rankin has often commented on the unfairness of male crime writers being taken seriously without having to show themselves capable of graphic violence, while women are not, and this small passage shows how little cruelty he has to describe to retain his reputation for grittiness: “Fox was readying to turn and head back to the car when a massive force detonated between his shoulders, sending him flying. His face hit the ground. He'd had just enough time to half turn his head, so that his nose escaped the worst of the impact. The weight bore down on him – someone was kneeling on his back, punching the air out of his lungs.

“Dazed, Fox tried to wrestle free, but a foot had connected with his chin. A black shoe, nothing fancy or memorable about it. It snapped his head back and he felt himself spiralling into the dark … [Rankin's ellipsis].” That's it, apart from later references to Fox's aches and bruises.

In place of extravagant bloodletting, Rankin offers a bleak picture of Scotland: The powerful are on the take or ready to turn a blind eye; the powerless are short of jobs and housing; drugs provide the occasion of crime for both; and, in Fox's words, “City's a deathtrap, the whole of Scotland's in meltdown, and for all I know the rest of the world's about to follow ...”

If the point of crime fiction is to make you think while entertaining you – and I believe it is – then Ian Rankin definitely does it better than most.

N.J. Cooper's latest novel is No Escape.