Bleeding Hearts

It was the first book I had read from Ian Rankin and I enjoyed it so much. It made me want to read all his books!

This book started out okay. I liked the main character, the professional assassin, and I was interested in his mystery. Then I met the rest of the characters... I'm not sure if I've ever encountered a more obnoxious and yet frequently boring collection. Somehow, they made what was undoubtedly supposed to be a gritty mystery merely puerile. The biggest reason I had to give up was the private detective from New York. There are ugly Americans, and then there's this guy. He took crude to such a level that I can only wonder how Rankin wrote him with a straight face. Whether he was meant to be commentary or color, I don't know, but I just can't bear to sit through any more of his POVs.

Wow! Fabulous! 10 of 10 stars!

What happens: <br />Assassin kills reporter, realizes he was set up, attempts to find out by whom. <br /><br />Characters: <br />Assassin-West humorous self depricating--but near the end slightly darker side comes out--why he is an assassin<br /><br />Belle--young, sexy daughter of gun dealer--b/c West's partner/lover <br /><br />Gun Runner--humours, even fact he is suffering from cancer handled w. touch of humor<br /><br />Hoffa--Ex-NYPD cop tracking assassin, drug habit<br /><br />What Works Well:<br /><br />--Characters are interesting and well drawn, with unique perspectives, dialogue--even more minor characters (sleazy TV producer, paranoid journalist in Seattle, Spike "Gun Heaven", Jazz--Spike's more/less adopted daughter. The author has clearly thought a lot about them attempted to give them multiple dimensions that come through dialogue/exchanges with main characters<br /><br />--Plot--the plot could be standard cat/mouse fair, but the shifting perspectives between unique characters helps keep it interesting, especially as the characters are interesting, West (the assassin is arguably more likeable--except for the part that he has killed innocent people--nice touch, the author does not attempt to make West a "good" assassin as is the case in similar stories--he only kills people who are asking for it--"You must have done something to bring me to your door"--John Cusack in G. Pointe Blank. Hoffa comes across as loutish and unpleasent (he is milking his client, he is a drug addict, he revels in the cheap publicity/attention)--but he is also very good at tracking West. <br /><br /><br />What does not work well:<br /><br />Characters--The characters could have been made more real--I really wanted to see more of West dealing with what he does--this comes through a little in the very end--he is clearly thinking about that he will not quit.., but the issue remains, he may have fallen into this line of work but he still continues to do it and also Hoffa, his decision at the end seemed rushed--I mean the author could have made it more plausible, if he had built it up more. <br /><br />Minor Point--Rankin captures Hoffa and Spike's American vernacular pretty well, but often Hoff using British phrases that no American (especially a crusty NYPD cop) would use such as "pensioner", "motorway". The words appears in Hoffa's thoughts or in his informal conversations so it appears they are his own words rather than attempting to quote or mock his UK counterparts.

I had to check the name of the author of "Bleeding Hearts" twice before I even reached page 40. Yes, the name on the book cover is indeed Ian Rankin, an Edgar Award winner for an Inspector Rebus novel. I have read most Rankin's Rebus novels and, as unbearably repetitive as they are, they are well-written, well-plotted, atmospheric mysteries with nicely developed characters and interesting psychological and sociological observations. Either Mr. Rankin has written "Bleeding Hearts" as a prank or it has been ghost-written by someone with limited literary skills. The book reads as an entry in a contest for The Most Ineptly Written And Cliche-Ridden Thriller.<br /><br />Michael Weston, a professional assassin, completes a successful hit in London, but the police almost catch him. He begins suspecting his employers and embarks on a quest of finding them. Simultaneously, Leo Hoffer, a private detective, is pursuing Mr. Weston with an order to kill him. Same old same old - the hunter becomes the hunted, etc. The plot is full of miraculously happening events occurring when they are convenient. As Mr. Weston himself realizes at some point "things start slotting in place". Yeah, they better do because it is already page 400 and no resolution is in sight.<br /><br />The blurb on the back cover says that Mr. Rankin has a "brilliant eye for character". In general I agree, but definitely not in this book. All characters here are one-dimensional caricatures, especially the loutish and obnoxious Leo Hoffer. The writing is occasionally atrocious: "Hoffer sniffed so much these days, he was hardly aware of it. He blew his nose and reminded himself to buy more tissues." Does it make the character seem real? No, but it makes Mr. Rankin literary skills seem less than stellar. The only redeeming qualities are brief descriptions of Washington state locales and some mild humor at the expense of U.S. culture. There is precious little of it, though. <br /><br />Waste of time!<br /><br />One and a half stars.<br />

Another solid novel from Ian Rankin. This one spends a chunk of time in the U.S., which is not typical Rankin territory, but, having been to many of the settings (though not to a Texas Shoot), to me the ‘transatlantic’ stuff rings true enough. I find this one interesting not least because of the way the narrative brings the reader into sympathy with the protagonist—an assassin-for-hire. By the time you’ve seen who he’s up against, you want to cheer for the simple, honest murderer!

Michael Weston is a hired killer who made one, unfortunately fatal, mistake in his otherwise very “successful” career.<br />When the novel starts he is in London where his assignment is to shoot a TV reporter, whose clothes have been described to him in amazing detail, when she exits a hotel. His shot, straight through the heart, is spot on, but as soon as he has fired his rifle he hears police approaching, forcing him to flee and come up with a last-minute escape plan.<br />While Michael usually makes a habit of not lingering on his kills after he’s executed them, he finds himself struggling with a lot of questions this time around. Questions that won’t leave him alone; questions he needs to answer.<br />How is it possible that the police arrived on the scene so quickly? Had they been tipped off? Had the person who contracted him to kill the reporter also set him up to be caught? Who had paid him for this kill in the first place? How could his employer have known what the woman would be wearing? And who would have wanted her death in the first place, and why?<br />Armed with only questions and very few clues, Michael sets out to find out what has been going on, assisted by Belinda, the daughter of one of his weapon suppliers.<br />On Michael’s tail is Leo Hoffer, a private investigator from New York who has been hired by the father of Weston’s only mistake to track down the killer and destroy him. Hoffer soon finds that his American ways don’t go down too well in London, but nevertheless discovers enough clues to stay hot on the trail of Weston, from London to Scotland and eventually to America where a big show down should mean the end to all the mysteries, but does it?<br /><br />I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this book. <br />In many ways it is a fascinating story. Told from the perspective of Weston we’re dealing with a narrator who should be unsympathetic to us, but isn’t. At the same time, the investigator trying to find and stop him should be the obvious force of good here but is rather the repulsive instead. I soon found myself rooting for the hired killer against those who would stop him, but never felt completely comfortable about that sentiment.<br />I’m also not completely convinced about this book’s merits as a thriller. While it has all the elements you’d expect in a good thriller – the hunter and the hunted, good versus bad, a chase across countries and continents and a final twist just when you think the story is over – they didn’t work to keep me turning the pages. At times the story seemed to get bogged down in too much detail; descriptions of the weapons used, haemophilia and other subjects encountered along the way seemed to take the pace out of the story and made this book just a little bit too easy to put down.<br /><br />Overall I say that this book left me mostly indifferent. Indifferent about the characters while I was reading the book, and indifferent about the story as a whole now that I’ve finished it.<br />It is not a bad book at all; the story idea is original and interesting and I had no problem finishing the book.It is not a great book either though. It was too easy to put this book down for me to be able to call this a page-turner.<br />One thing this book did succeed in though is arousing my curiosity about the Rebus novels by Rankin and their huge popularity. I will have to read a few titles in that series soon, if only to find out how they compare to this story.<br />

Goodness me, this is a too long and too wearisome crime thriller. There’s a lot of pursuing the criminals and running away from the good guys, or running away from the criminals and pursuing the good guys, depending on whose point of view you’re in at the time. Not that anyone is really good at all, by any measure. There are two leads – the private detective and the hit man – but neither is hero or villain. This of course is a very realistic approach to take, but it does mean that the reader roots for neither – or possibly both, but for me it was neither as I didn’t find either of them likeable or interesting.<br /><br />I did quite enjoy the fact that the hit man was a haemophiliac though as that was a nice twist. But that’s as about as good as it got – though I do accept I’m probably not the prime target for this novel. It’s best classed as a boys-with-toys thriller. Because there are a lot of guns in all sorts of different scenarios and it was exhausting trying to keep up with the technicalities of them all. So in the end I didn’t bother. I didn’t bother much with the plot either as it was very clichéd and had – again – lots of different groups in different countries up to no good and running around a great deal. Sigh.<br /><br />Really, by about a quarter of the way through, I was just glancing over the bare outlines of what might have been going on, and trying to finish the pesky beast as quickly as I could. There’s a girl (who is far more boring than she ought to be as the female lead) and a dead father, a journalist or several, various gun suppliers and some police. Please add your own plot as you expect it to be and you won’t be far wrong.<br /><br />That said, Spike’s niece, Jazz, was great fun and I wished for more of her, but it was not to be, alas. To cap it all, the ending is the ultimate cliché to end all clichés and not worth the getting there.

A fairly adequate thriller which I'd likely have rated higher had it been by a different author: from Ian Rankin, though, I tend to expect something that leaves most other thrillers in the dust, and this doesn't really do that.<br /><br />A hitman realizes that whoever commissioned his latest job was trying to set him up, so, with the daughter of his chief weapons supplier, he goes on the run from the cops and from Hoffer -- the fat US PI who's been on his tail all these years -- but also on the track of whoever was responsible for the trap. The trail takes him to the Washington State headquarters of an obscure but strangely wealthy cult, and into the sights of an extraordinarily vicious intelligence-services operative.<br /><br />What's interesting is that the narrative allows the hitman to tell his own part of the tale in the first person (in very approximately every other chapter), while the third-person telling in the intervening chapters mainly focuses on Hoffer; further, the hitman, a mass murderer, becomes a far more sympathetic character than the supposed good guy. The novel's skewed morality works pretty well, and does distinguish it from the herd of standard airport thrillers; unfortunately, <i>Bleeding Hearts</i> includes also various of the traits that can make those thrillers so dull (the fascination with lovingly acronymed weapons, the tedious descriptions of the minutiae of the characters' actions [the coffee was good, the coffee was bad, the coffee was hot, the coffee was lukewarm, the coffee came in a Rupert Bear mug], etc.), and the denouement had me curling my lip with disbelief.<br /><br />Overall, then, I felt as if a five-star restaurant had served me a three-star meal: not too shabby a meal, but it suffered because falling so far short of my expectations.<br />

It was pretty good. I especially enjoyed the fact that the main character visited places in Washington (the State, not the District) that I've been to many times. And I'm not talking about Seattle either, but Port Angeles, the Strait de Juan de Fuca (or something like that), and Hurricane Ridge.<br /><br />It was one of his few stand alone books, so you don't need to have read anything else to know what's going on. In addition, the changing POV (between the assassin and the private investigator) wasn't bothersome at all like it normally is for me. It may have helped that the assassin was in the first person and the private investigator was in the third person so there was no confusion upon starting a new chapter.