Bleeding Hearts

Rating:
Summary: "Some snipers go for the head. Not me. I go for the heart."
Review: 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 the foreword to a 2000 (alas, British-only!) compilation uniting all three volumes, were a series of thrillers he wrote under the pseudonym Jack Harvey: Jack for his newborn son, Harvey for his wife's maiden name.

After a good, albeit a bit uneven beginning with "Witch Hunt" - the story of a female assassin hunted by agents of the British and the French governments - things really shift into high gear with the second Jack Harvey novel, "Bleeding Hearts." Unusual is, already, its protagonist: another assassin, but this time a large part of the story is told from his perspective, and the presumed "bad guy's" first person narrative magnetically draws you in, until you end up rooting for *him* - the cool, slick, smart, presumably rather goodlooking operator - and not for the ex-cop-turned-P.I. who's been on his heels for years, and compared to whom even a classic noir gumshoe would almost look like an epitome of innocence (besides being a good deal slimmer). What is more, the story's enigmatic anti-hero suffers from a birth defect both supremely ironic and potentially fatal in his line of work: hemophilia ...

Mike Weston's nickname in professional circles on both sides of the law is "Demolition Man," for the small set of explosives he plants near the site of each job in lieu of a calling card. After a few jobs have gone anything but smoothly (or so rumor has it), he needs a good, clean hit to restore his reputation. Just that seems to be handed to him with the assassination of a reporter about to embark on a story involving a religious cult with the peaceful-sounding name "Disciples of Love." And initially everything goes as planned: the target is where she is supposed to be exactly at the time she is supposed to be there, and he nails her with a shot into the heart; another calling card of his.

But then things start to happen that he hasn't been planning for, and in his view there's only one explanation - he's been set up. So while normally he would leave the place of his hit as quickly and silently as possible, now he has to retrace the job to its origins, find out who was behind it and who wants him out of the way. Assisted by Belinda, the daughter of his trusted, reclusive Yorkshire gun supplier, he soon finds himself on the trace of a group of ruthless people who actually do make our Mike look well-neigh moral in comparison, as well as an international conspiracy not only involving the "Disciples of Love" but also, in the novel's conclusion, drawing on a lesser-known factual tidbit from the Iran-Contra affair.

We learn little about Mike's motivation and moral code over the course of the novel. He does reveal that, not having found much pleasure in more ordinary occupations, he gradually slid into his current profession through the fascination with guns and his prowess as a shooter that his father had first awakened in him; and he presents us with all professional killers' age-old adage: "I knew I wouldn't be working for the Salvation Army. But then I wasn't killing any nuns and priests, either. It was only after a few hits that I decided anyone was fair game. It isn't up to the executioner to pronounce guilt or innocence. He just makes sure the instruments are humane." Outside a few insights into his psyche like this, however, Mike's focus is more on the "who," "what," "where" and "how" of a job, not the "why" - the latter only becomes a question when his own life is at stake. But this is all just as well. Rankin walks a tight rope in keeping Mike's inner workings largely concealed from the reader, and he walks it convincingly; much more so than if he had tried to overtly humanize Mike Weston.

Along their chase, Mike and Belinda encounter a number of unique and likewise deliciously drawn characters; to name but one, Mike's friend Spike Jackson, as gun-crazy redneck as you'll ever encounter them but at the same time, their only true ally. Add to that Rankin's superb instinct for locales, language and dialogue, and you have one heck of a ride; a high-powered chase from London to Yorkshire, Scotland and all across the United States, ending with a shootout near Olympic National Park in Washington State that could have been choreographed by the likes of Sam Peckinpah and Brian De Palma.

Although I'm happy enough for Rankin's success with Inspector Rebus and wouldn't want any story featuring Edinburgh's finest (and most hard-drinking) D.I. missing from my bookcases, in a way I regret that Rankin had to shelve Jack Harvey after only three books; and of all of them, "Bleeding Hearts" is by far my favorite. In the foreword to the above-mentioned compilation, Rankin concedes that in creating Mike Weston he may inadvertently have either "been paying homage" to one of his own favorite novels, Martin Amis's "Money," or "trying to write that seductive narrative voice of [the other novel's protagonist's] John Self's out of [his] system." Whatever it was, it certainly had me hooked. And Mr. Rankin, in the unlikely event that you should ever resurrect Jack Harvey (or write a non-Rebus novel under your own name), I promise I'll read that one, too - with pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: Gun for Hire
Review: This is what used to be called a "rattling good yarn".It's a tale of a hired assassin, a crack-shot sniper, who travels the world, killing people for payment...a cold-blooded murderer who also happens to be a haemophiliac. Strangely enough, you find yourself empathising with this man as the story proceeds, which it does at a cracking pace. Michael Weston is hired by an unknown client to shoot a TV news journalist. He successsfully carries out his assignment but things start to go awry and he realises that he is being pursued by an old adversary, Leo Hohher, a former NY cop, now a private investigator. Michael visits Max Harrison, an old friend living deep in the country, to buy guns and ammunition and meets his daughter Bel- gorgeous and a crack shot. While Michael and Bel are off on an errand, unknown criminals enter the house and behead Max, leaving the body to be found by Bel and Michael. The chase takes them to the US where they connect with a weird and suspect religious cult whose leader has unidentifiable sources of income. Even though the hero of Bleeding Hearts is a thoroughly amoral character, one can't help but hope that he comes good in the end and survives the shoot-outs.