Customer Reviews

Bleeding Hearts (A Jack Harvey Novel)

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Whether or not Ian Rankin's John Rebus police procedurals or his stand-alone works are seen as "literary" is totally irrelevant to the elements that make all of them exciting, entertaining, often funny, well plotted and a cut above the ordinary. His ironic twists accelerate the pace and keep readers breathlessly carried along by the action. BLEEDING HEARTS is the newest thriller to appear in the United States --- it was published in England in 1994 under the pseudonym Jack Harvey. In it, we follow the trajectories of the lives of two men: an assassin of international repute, and a former NYPD cop now turned private eye who has vowed to track down the infamous killer and execute him.

The story opens in a hotel bar in England where me meet the killer, Michael Weston, having a drink with a passing acquaintance. In his first-person narration he tells readers that his mark has only three more hours to live, while opining to his companion: "You know what it's like these days --- only the toughest are making it. No room for bleeding hearts though of course in my line of work bleeding hearts are the business."

Today his assignment is to shoot a woman who will be leaving a particular hotel, at a particular time, wearing a particular dress patterned in yellow and blue. He has no idea who she is and doesn't really care. Later, as the police show up at almost the precise second he pulls the trigger, he can't believe what has just transpired. How could they be here so quickly? he wonders. His ad-hoc plan to leave the scene is to call 999 and ask for an ambulance because, he tells them, he's "a severe hemophiliac" who has been involved in a terrible accident and his head is bleeding.

Weston in fact is a hemophiliac, albeit a mild one, and this twist adds verisimilitude to the character that is more cerebral than physical. As happens in life, his illness is a curse and a blessing --- this time it is his means of escape and soon he is free. He now can ponder what went wrong; this was supposed to be an easy hit. His conclusion: he had to have been set up --- but by whom, and why?

Weston must escape to safety and makes his way to an isolated farm where Max and his daughter Belle live. They deal in arms of every sort and sell to anyone with enough cash to pay for them. Weston needs their support and access to their cache. He rests a bit and plans an assault on a so-far phantom enemy.

Weston has always worked through a middleman, the gunrunner Max. He never wanted to get "personally involved" with his victims or paymasters. Death is only the result of the job he has to do; it is a fact of life but not necessarily one he cares to analyze. He is very smart, very careful, very dedicated and very lethal. He looks like an average man of a certain age who is personable but reveals nothing about himself to anyone.

Meanwhile, in Vine Street police station, Chief Inspector Bob Broome comes to the conclusion that Weston, dubbed the "Demolition Man," is the shooter. But the police have no clear evidence to point to the real target. "The people on the [hotel] steps, that's another thing. We've got a journalist [dead], a secretary of state, and some senior guy from an East European embassy."

After a powwow with his detectives, Broome makes a call to the United States --- to Leo Hoffer, who ran his own detective agency. These days, Hoffer's only personal client is Robert Walkins, the father of a young woman who the Demolition Man killed in a freak accident, which so far was Weston's only miss. Walkins and Hoffer have been obsessed with finding the D-Man and killing him.

Ian Rankin is one of those writers whose prose grabs the reader with the first line. From there it's a heady journey through a fast-paced, intelligent plotline, awash with characters who jump off the page and a climax that turns everything the reader was thinking upside down. BLEEDING HEARTS is not only a thriller about a sniper and the man who tracks him. It is also a story that is timely and raises issues of good and evil to a higher plane. Rankin wants the reader inside the heads of his anti-hero and his nemesis. Their thoughts, their rationalizations, their uncertainties, their fears and their destinies are central to understanding what motivates these people who do what they do. Readers are asked to "stand back" and judge for themselves how evil or good these men are. The supporting characters play no less a part in fleshing out the architecture of the book, and they inhabit the space, each with their own personalities and agendas, be they good or bad.

BLEEDING HEARTS is a challenge to read. It is gritty and tough, but that's Rankin's trademark. All of his books explore the dark side of people's lives and the underbellies of space they inhabit --- but he balances that by shining a light into the hidden nooks and the shadowed crannies that ultimately override the bad guys. The body of work he has amassed speaks to his readability and storytelling prowess. And while loyal fans look forward to the next John Rebus installment, BLEEDING HEARTS is one of his best stand-alone novels and is certainly a keeper.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

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.

Every once in a while it's good to read a book about a sniper that seems to have touch of humanity. This is a sniper without a clear conscience and it added a refreshing element to the story. It was also new that this sniper was good at shooting, but he wasn't a walking superweapon without a rifle either, and was aware of it. Usually, these guys are portrayed as extreme killing machines with or without weapons, and at times there is nothing wrong with reading about characters like that. The fact that this guy wasn't, just provided a new perspective with this action plot. It was well written, the end wasn't predictable, and it provided enough testosterone driven combat that the book was never boring.

This is the first American release for an early novel by British writer Ian Rankin, author of the award-winning "John Rebus" series of mysteries. Michael West is an assassin and when he is double crossed after murdering a journalist, he must go on the run with assistance from the daughter of an arms dealer to find out who set him up. He is chased by a drug-addled American private eye who will stop at nothing to take him down. Ranking throws in the kitchen sink on this one: cops, crooks, spies and cults all take part in the narrative with plenty of shoot 'em up action along the way. The ending is a little contrived, but the story works for the most part, and shows how talented a writer Rankin was even at this early stage.

In a departure from his Inspector Rebus series, author Rankin pursues his taste for blood and the hunt (ie, "Blood Hunt," "Witch Hunt," "Let It Bleed," etc.) with a new set of characters and a pseudonym (Jack Harvey) for Bleeding Heart's original publication in 1994. This exploration into new thriller territory for him was published that year in the U.K. and presents a rather clever variation in the killer-for-hire scenario--worth the reprint for a wider audience.

Not only is Michael Weston a sniper assassin who commands the big bucks for his unerring heart shot (as opposed to the standard head shot) but he's also been branded the "Demolition Man" or "D-man" for his tactic of employing a bomb well placed and timed to divert his target and protectors before his fatal kill. And, differences from the norm don't stop there. Weston, a killing machine, is a hemophiliac, a bleeder.

The job that sets this journey off is a contract on Eleanor Ricks, a TV reporter, as she emerges from a building in which she's conducted an interview. Curiously, he's been told by his anonymous employer what she'll be wearing so that he can spot his quarry in a crowd that includes more than one VIP. In fact, the nature of his employ and its aftermath raises questions that demand answers. Any one of those VIPs would have been the more likely target so, as the news stories postulate, could it have been a bad shot, a mistaken aim? Hit man Weston, of course, knows better. He doesn't do mistaken aims.

But even he is wondering about this particular target. It's not his job to question such matters since it's only about the money and he gets plenty. But how did the contractor know what the victim would be wearing? And why did the police arrive at the scene so quickly that he almost didn't get away from his firing place? Was this a setup by an enemy? This sniper-assassin won't rest until he gets the answers. He might even have taken his last contract.

Someone else is equally interested, though from an altogether different angle. Overweight but astute private detective Hoffer has been hunting Weston for years for an employer who will not forget the death of his daughter. The task to avenge her has been Hoffer's long term, well paid mission, and with this new killing new lines of inquiry open up. In fact, he's going to get as close as he ever has to closing his case, but the outcome will be anything but the predictable one.

The dual chase takes Weston and Hoffer into a pursuit that covers a wide geographical area and many a misleading clue. In his jump from London to Texas and back to Yorkshire, Weston will change names and hook up with his old weapons dealer pal Max in Texas who always provides a lesson in exotic weaponry and ammo. Max's spunky and gorgeous daughter Bel (née Belinda) provides herself as a partner/companion in Weston's tracking of a pseudo-religious cult whose leader he suspects is his mystery contractor.

There's enough here to keep the pace flowing and the bodies falling, while preserving the essential morality of the hit man as a character trait rather than a simple bargain-with-the-devil compromise. Rankin is obviously a thoughtful thriller creator who wants depth -- if a quirky variety of it -- for his heroes and anti-heroes. The twists and surprises come as much from the choices he makes as for the action dynamics he provides.

Michael Weston -- if that's really his name -- is a craftsman at his job, which is killing people. Only once did he shoot the wrong person (a young girl) and that was a regrettable accident, but it's come back to haunt him. His current commission involves taking out a London journalist on the steps of her hotel, which he accomplishes, but the police are there suspiciously fast. Who sicced them on him? As he begins trying to track back to his employer for his own protection, he runs afoul of what appears to be a cult group with access to too much money and connections to the American spook underground. And then there's the publicity-hungry private detective who's been tracking him for years. The plot is nicely complicated and its resolution is based on a real occurrence. The characters are well drawn and the author maintains a frenetic pace that would make a good film.

British assassin Michael "Demolition Man" Weston is setting up for his next kill, London TV journalist Eleanor Ricks though he has no idea who employed his services. However, he also knows that American private investigator Hoffer is seeking Weston. In the States Weston wrongfully murdered the wrong young girl; the father has retained Hoffer to bring Weston back to Texas for Lone Star justice.

Weston completes his mission successfully with his sniping hitting his victim's heart, but realizes something went wrong as the London police almost catch him for the Ricks kill as his explosive diversion failed. He escapes, but they hunt him. He wonders if Hoffer set him up or if his client did. Concluding that he must uncover the identity of his last employer, Weston follows clues that take him back to Texas where an illegal weapons dealer is arranging a big pay off even as the professional hitman knows high noon is coming soon.

This is a reprint of an early Ian Rankin antihero thriller with no Rebus anywhere in sight. The exciting story line is at its complex best when Weston is stalking and being stalked simultaneously, but loses some of its suspense when the confrontation occurs. Fans of Ian Rankin will want to read this different type of thriller than his usual Rebus investigations.

Harriet Klausner

I am so glad this wasn't the first Ian Rankin book I read. Otherwise, it would have been the last, and I never would have discovered his terrific Inspector Rebus stories. Rankin has the advantage on me with his Rebus novels because I don't know anything about Scotland, so whatever he says about that, I can believe. But, while reading Bleeding Hearts (which I chose not to finish), I kept thinking to myself, 'this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.' The American private eye somehow manages to get himself on British TV as a famous American private eye. Does that ever happen? Know any famous private eyes? And he says things to people like, 'I'm an American, and where I come from, we show hospitality to strangers.' Really? And he's from New York! I do admire Rankin's efforts to get America and Americans right, and appreciate how difficult that might be for someone from Scotland, but he fails time and again, leading me to finally put the book aside. It is a failed effort. That said, the Rebus mysteries are great.

I agree with an earlier reviewer, that none of these characters are very likable. This was my first experience with Ian Rankin, after being told many times that I would love his writing [guess I should have started with a John Rebus story]. I never got into any of the characters, did not believe them or their motivations, and really struggled to care what happened to them. Really, the most interesting character is the woman who gets killed in the opening chapter. Finally, just gave up after about 150 pages, flipped to the back and read the last few chapters and the "twist" was what I expected. Blah.

It took me a long time to finish this book. When I thought about reading it, I found I thought the story was interesting and I wanted to know what would happen, but it just took effort to want to read it. I couldn't figure out why.

That was until about halfway through the book and I realized I didn't like any of the characters and couldn't care less about what happened to them. That's what was holding me back.

Bel was whiny, passive aggressive and naive to the point of my just wanting her killed off. Overall, I got the impression that Rankin could never make up his mind who she was supposed to be.

Weston, the infamous D-Man, was a milquetoast. Without a sniper rifle, he came across as bumbling and weak. The great assissin barely knew how to use a pistol. That wasn't so bad. It could have been endearing under the right circumstances. But added to the fact that he was incapable of standing up to Bel and that she basically led him around by his nose, he was character I couldn't believe in. I would say that he was "whipped" if he hadn't been so apathetic about their relationship. He was pretty much apatehtic about everything. Even his interest in finding out who set him up came across as forced for the sake of the plot.

Finally, there was Leo Hoffer, who took being the obnoxious New Yorker/American to new heights. Rankin's depiction of Hoffer as such was so over the top it seemed like parody. All of the Americans, except possibly Clancy, were caricatures. Hoffer had some "cute" quirks, but overall he was yet another character I felt should be killed off. And given his lack of use in the latter half of a novel, and looking back on it, contrived use in the earlier half, he probably could have been left out of the novel altogether.

The ending, both that regarding the "big conspiracy" and who hired the D-Man, were anti-clamatic, contrived, somewhat illogical, and utterly disappointing. Not so much the resolution of the "conspiracy". That was a "who cares" moment. It was the answer to who hired Weston and why that was so disappointing.

This is the second novel I've read by Rankin. Witch Hunt being the first. It's my second disappointment. I'm not sure I'll be picking up another by this author.