Complicity by Iain Banks
Published 1993 · 313 pages · 86,075 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Thriller & Suspense, Mystery & Crime, Literary Fiction
How hard is Complicity to read?
Complicity scores 41 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 30 out of 100
- Banks writes in brisk contemporary English with Scottish slang and journalistic shorthand. It is closer to Beach Read than to anything ornate, with only some computing and political terms.
- Sentence structure: 32 out of 100
- Sentences are short and conversational, especially in Cameron's first-person chapters. The second-person killer sections are more clipped and rhythmic but remain easy to parse.
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- The plot is concrete: murders, police interviews, drug-fuelled evenings. Moral questions about complicity sit beneath the action, but the book handles them through events, as in The Housemaid.
- Information density: 40 out of 100
- Plot threads on the arms scandal, the murders and Cameron's past arrive steadily but manageably. It is denser than Beach Read thanks to political background, yet remains plot-driven.
- Narrative indirection: 48 out of 100
- The unnamed 'you' killer and Cameron's evasions make readers infer identity and motive. Banks hides information but the plot signals clearly enough to follow.
- Symbolic density: 38 out of 100
- The Despot game and the second-person device carry thematic weight about power and complicity. The symbolism is signposted, more like 1984 than Gatsby.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Cameron's flippancy and self-justification need reading against, and Banks's satire of Thatcher-era Britain adds bite. The irony is sharper than Beach Read's but less elaborate than Lolita's.
- Resolution withholding: 32 out of 100
- The mystery resolves and the culprit is revealed. Moral discomfort lingers, but plot questions close.
- Structural complexity: 48 out of 100
- Alternating first-person and second-person chapters, with a withheld identity for the 'you', adds some formal play. The timeline stays mostly linear, as in a conventional thriller.
How Complicity is regarded
Complicity holds a literary regard score of 49 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.