The Jack Harvey Novels

By Ian Rankin

Book Overview

WITCH HUNT, BLEEDING HEARTS, BLOOD HUNT: Three thrillers by mega-seller Ian Rankin, writing as Jack Harvey 'Rankin's ability to create a credible character, delivering convincing dialogue to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0752837885
• ISBN13: 9780752837888
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Orion Publishing
• Length: 787 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.1" x 1.6" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Three Early Mainstream Thrillers from Scotland's Finest.

Oh, the blessings of being an author with too much time on his hands. I can just picture Ian Rankin sitting in the house (farm? cottage?) he and his wife bought in rural Dordogne, having whizzed through the manuscript for yet another increasingly well-written John Rebus novel and - having left behind all other employment across the British Channel and neither inclined to carpentry nor gardening - feeling his mind growing restless, in need of occupation. Now, wouldn't you have started looking for another outlet for your creative energy had you been in his spot? The result of the aforementioned process, which Rankin describes in this compilation's foreword, were three thrillers written under the pseudonym Jack Harvey (Jack for his newborn son, Harvey for his wife's maiden name); now finally back in print and reunited in a single volume. Jack Harvey's career began with "Witch Hunt," the story of a female assassin - the title character - pursued by various agents of the British and French governments, as well as retired secret service man Dominic Elder, who has both a private and a professional bone to pick with her. The plot moves at Rankin's trademark fast pace, from Witch's arrival on Britain's South Coast (leaving her calling card by blowing up both boats she'd used to cross the Channel from France ... with their crews inside) to her first order of "real" business in Scotland, then to London, where Witch implements her plan's second phase and where her hunters have meanwhile formed a reluctant coalition, to France and Germany, for two rookie agents' unlicensed investigation of the assassin's past, and ultimately back to London, for Witch's final coup, amidst a major international conference no less. As in the Rebus novels, Rankin particularly excels in the creation of his male characters; they are three-dimensional and, all in their own ways, flawed and profoundly human(e). The book's few female protagonists strike me a bit too much as variations on the same theme (superwoman with varying degrees of femininity, or what passes for such in male eyes): while justifiable in the title character - especially if, as Rankin says, she was inspired by the "Elektra: Assassin" series - overall this made it a tad difficult for me to identify with either of them. For proof that Rankin, even then, could do much better, consider DC Clarke in the Rebus novels ... or Belinda, the (anti-)hero's companion in the second Jack Harvey novel, "Bleeding Hearts." Plot-wise, I don't necessarily think the final denouement of "Witch Hunt" is a let-down per se; although I would've wished it had been developed more fully, as had the private motivations of Dominic Elder and one of the rookies, French agent Dominique (!) Herault. Still, Rankin's first Jack Harvey thriller is a major cut above average and a great introduction to the two following books. For things really shift into high gear with the second novel, "Bleeding Hearts." Unusual is, already, its protagonist Mike Wes

Reccomended to all Rankin admirers

This is a must for any fan of Ian Rankin. Each story is an ideal showcase of his talent when writing outside the restrictions set when he is writing his brilliant Inspector Rebus novels, and it is great to know that Rankin is no one-trick pony. Here are presented three early novels written under the name "Jack Harvey". "Witch Hunt" is the first, and is a complex tale about the hunt by a varied group of British Agents to find "The Witch", an audacious and sucessful female terrorist. It's a while since i read this one, but i rememeber enjoying it a lot. The plot is complex, enjoyable, and the characters, a varied bunch, are all fascinating and good to read about. "Bleeding Hearts", is probably the best of the three. It's a brilliantly tense story about a hitman. He carries out a job, but he's suspicious when the police arrive much sooner than expected, as if someone's tipped them off...Who's tried to set him up? Why? He has to find out. This is a well written book, and an excellent thriller. It's pace is great, it solution is unexpected and shocking. It is quite a feat that Rankin makes us like the lead character (the hit-man) who is actually a very likeable man, miles more than the Investigator who is after him, who is highly dislikeable. I enjoyed this one a great deal. "Blood Hunt", the final story, i also enjoyed a great deal. I sped through it and, as i say, enjoyed it immensely, but writing now, i can remember very little of it. It's basically about an ex-SAS man who'se journalist brother is murdered, so he sets out on a quest to discover why. Cue all sorts of mysterious characters, conspiracies, and plot twists, up until an exciting showdown on what i recall as a forested island. All in all, each tale is probably not the top of the genre (save Bleeding Hearts) but the writing is first-class, the characters are very strong, and it's very interesting for fans of Rankin to see him moving within other areas. (NB: Gordon Reeve, the protagonist of Blood Hunt, is the same Gordon Reeve who was the killer in the first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses. However, BH is a sort of "parrallell" novel, one in which Reeve never became a killer. the events of Knots never occured, and it's interesting to see a new face to Gordon Reeve, a character we fell we already know...)