Customer Reviews

Blood Hunt

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Reeve had been one of Nietzsche's gentlemen. Nietzsche had carried on the work of Descartes and others- men who needed to dominate, to control, to eliminate chance. But while Nietzsche wanted superman, controllers, he also wanted people to live dangerously. Reeve felt he was fulfilling these criteria if no other. He was living dangerously. He just wondered if he needed mutual aide along the way."

Gordon Reeve was a soldier in the Counter-Revolutionary War fare Unit of the SAS. He was very skilled and much admired for his talents. After his last assignment where he was laid open to the enemy by his team mate, and only survived by his great skill's; he asked to be discharged. He started his own surival camp in the mountains of Scotland. He belived in the Seven "P" philosophy: "Proper Planning and Preparation Prevent Piss-Poor Performance." This is what he taught and this is how he lved his life. He married, had a son and one day received a call from the US to tell him his brother had committed suicide.

Gordon flew to San Diego to find his brother's remains and became enmeshed in the murder not suicide of his brother. He discovered many interesting clues and became involved in the illegal wastes and products of chemical companies. Mystery and intrigue always follow Ian Rankin, and this is no different. The clues Gordon finds brings him to London, France, back to the US and in that time his home is bugged and his family is in danger. The people in the multi- billion dollar chemical business have ties to the CIA and to all of the Intelligence communities in msot countries. Gordon Reeves faced real danger, and in the telling and sleuthing he discovered friends who assisted him. Reeves is an amazing character and his mind is a steel trap much like my good friend, BK. He is a complex character, as are all of Ian Rankin's. He has a personality that is likeable but so multifaceted that you become enmeshed in the mystery and turn every corner with zeal as Reeve encounters one problem after another.

I like Gordon Reeve. He is a philosopher and his thoughtful discussion of anarchy and Nietzsche is fulfilling. He is intelligent, complex and sexy. He loves his family, he is a man of few words but each word counts. Gordon Reeve is my kind of man, a man of mystery and delight.

Ian Rankin has introduced us to a new set of characters and they work. This is a man of intelligence with a love of philosophy and action. Contrary to others' opinions, this novel does work. Certainly,no one can compare to Rebus, Ian Rankin's best known Scottish detective, but Gordon Reeves works for me. An altogether different kind of man and detective, he is a thinking woman's man. Highly recommended, prisrob 7-04-06

I have read most of Rankin's Inspector Rebus series and enjoyed them. Fans of Rebus may be disappointed because this is quite a different book. I was not. I found the story quite well developed, the characters interesting and the international conspiracy quite believable.Fans of Ludlum and other international thriller writers will find it hard to put down.

Sure the main character is overdone, the plotting would not stand up to close analysis, and the "philosophy" is basically garbage but the story moves and is competently written. What more can one ask for in a thriller? Jack Higgins made a fine living out of similar stuff which was not nearly as good. Four stars, perhaps because the competition in this genre has become so weak.

I gave this book a try after reading 'The Falls', my first exposure to the Rebus series. I was interested in seeing how Rankin would approach a standalone novel. I had high hopes for 'Blood Hunt', but it got bogged down by too many 'conspiracy thriller' cliches. Even worse, most of what we're told throughout t he book is almost swept under the rug at the end.
This book was a little too 'Andy McNab' for my taste.
Presumably, the raction to this book is typical to that for other 'Jack Harvey' titles. It looks like Rankin should stick with his own name, and his best-known character.

Readers of Rankin's Inspector Rebus series will recognize the hero of this novel, George Reeve, as a later nemesis of Rebus. And while Reeve makes for an interesting character, this early effort from Rankin (originally written under a pseudonym) isn't on the level of his later work.

When former SAS Reeve hears that his freelance journalist brother has committed suicide while investigating a story in California, Reeve flies to America to retrieve the body. It's not long before he questions whether his brother's death was truly a suicide, and he's soon delving into the story on which his brother was working. As expected, he soon becomes a target of those who don't appreciate his digging.

It's difficult to judge this one without comparing it to the outstanding Rebus series, against which it suffers. The characters aren't as well-developed, so the natural ease with which Rebus and his associates talk and act doesn't exist to the same degree in this novel. Reeve makes a decent hero, although it will be hard for some to reconcile this behavior with his later terrorizing of Rebus.

Overall, a decent read, and one worth your time. It's interesting to see how Rankin writes then as compared to now, and it's a fairly compelling story.

The short overview of the author's life at the start of this edition left me wondering where he learned as much as he seems to know about commando tactics and hand-to-hand fighting. I am not and have never been a commando or any kind of soldier, and the knowledge that Rankin displays certainly impresses me as it is no doubt intended to do. However I am fairly easily impressed when it comes to such matters, I would guess the majority of the public are similarly placed; and I sense that Rankin knows this. This is an early production from him, and that shows to some extent. I detect that he is still, up to a point, learning and rehearsing his trade as a tough-guy novelist, although I should say before I go any further that I found this book a great read and enjoyed it thoroughly.

A fully professional practitioner in this field would never have left his readers even suspecting that he may not know as much as he lets on, however true that may actually be. There are some other signs too that the author is still getting into his stride. In particular, he seems to lose interest in, almost to forget about, some elements of the plot that he had had flagged up as particularly significant in the early chapters. Who actually killed the hero's brother, for instance? This is the whole starting-point of the narrative, but the focus in the later developments moves elsewhere. The `family' theme runs into the sand too, and - very strikingly - the `pink mist' that descends so dramatically on the hero early on simply seems to be crowded out as a thread in the story as it progresses.

Far more important however is that this author really knows how to write a gripping action tale. The plot is completely comprehensible, but I'm not sure whether that counts on the plus or on the minus side in such a novel. Probably the plus side, as it no doubt a perverse taste of my own that I enjoy being totally baffled by the plots of spy stories and the like. A definite plus is that there is no sex whatsoever in this book, the author resisting any temptation he might have felt to deviate from his tense and action-replete narrative. His style of writing is excellent in all major respects too. It is plain, it is literate, it is clear and it is coherent and self-consistent. This is the first novel by Rankin that I have read, and I sense that as a literary craftsman he is capable of more ambitious things than he attempts here. However he is right not to over-extend himself in this respect. I thought I detected a couple of shy attempts at phrase-making along the lines of (say) Chandler, but in general he seems to hold back from that sort of thing for his present purposes, although I dare say he has become more adventurous in his later writing. At this stage he keeps his eye on the ball and delivers his narrative with real punch, never at any stage losing this reader's attention and providing a wind-up that is genuinely exciting.

I thought that the characterisation was rather good as well. What convinced me rather less was the environmental message, where he seems to me to fall between two stools. If he wants to shock us, he needs to try harder than this, I'd say. The revelations are bog-standard material and just a bit superficial, and I found myself yearning slightly for the over-the-top hyperbole of Ben Elton's Stark. It may be of course that Rankin just did not want this theme to overbalance his main narrative, but if that was the intention it might have been better to avoid any sense of sermonising whatsoever, as this particular theme is hard to treat as a sub-plot.

A Good Read for all that, with all the right ingredients for such a story selected, mixed and cooked in the right way. Definitely worth buying if you can't borrow a copy.

If this is your first Ian Rankin book, forget it as fast as you can, and run quickly to one of his wonderful Rebus books. They are as good as this one is hollow. First one must swallow the coincidence that a US pharmaceutical/chemical company hires a former SAS companion and enemy of our hero to do their dirty work. After that, when trouble erupts for Bro. Reeve, our hero, he gets on Interpol's list of wanted folk. But still he is able to fly back and forth from US to Heathrow at will, pass through immigration and customs, without as much trouble as a US tourist heading to Cancun. So much for Interpol. Under all this is the pasty treatment of our hero's wife and son. This novel is something like the computer games Bro. Reeve's son Allan plays continually. So please, don't judge Rankin by this one. He's really a good writer, who must have felt the need for some extra cash by churning out BLOOD HUNT.

Ex-SAS soldier Gordon Reeve, who is an expert on survival, trade and field craft, has a place in a remote, out of the way place in Scotland, where he trains future bodyguards and the like. This is safer for him, but not as satisfying, as being in action himself as he'd barely gotten out alive after an assignment in South America after a brother in arms betrayed him. Gordon killed the traitor, left the service, went into business for himself. Things are kind of ticking off okay for Gordon, he marries, has a son, then gets a call from Amercia. It appears his brother has committed Suicide.

James Reeve was a reporter in San Diego and he wasn't a bit like his brother. James wasn't a gun guy, not into being in shape either, but despite that he was good reporter and he was about to come out with a story about the chemicals in our food and this was the kind of expose that could very well destroy Co-World Chemicals. Did they do in James and make it look like Suicide?

Someone's going to have to explain it all to Gordon and they're gonna have to do it in person, because Gordon knows James never would have taken his life with a gun. It's murder as far as Gordon is concerned and he's gonna prove it, but along the way Gordon is gonna confront a surprise or two, including that dead guy traitor, who maybe isn't so dead after all.

Though this book was written before the excellent Rebus novels, it's well worth reading. If you like Lee Child's Jack Reacher character you're bound to like Gordon Reeve.

Former soldier Gordon Reeve flies to California to claim the body of his brother Jim, an apparent suicide. But it soon becomes obvious that the facts aren't fitting together and that Jim's death was murder.

In spite of three attempts, I just could not get into this book. I will admit I'm not a big fan of conspiracy themes but, that aside, I didn't find the character interesting or the plot compelling. For me, this was a Rankin practice book until he started writing Rebus.

My first foray into non-Rebus Rankin (Jack Harvey, whatever) left me with an understanding of why authors might use alternate names for their earlier, less-stimulating projects. "Blood Hunt" has some elements that kept me entertained, but they seemed to wane as I worked my way through the 500 pages. The bad guy, Jay, seems to hold a kind of silly grudge from his SAS experience in the Falklands War while on an operation with main character Gordon Reeve. There is also the story of a highly provocative cover-up involving BSE (Mad Cow Disease) and a murdered journalist/brother that is never brought to a close. Too much, really. Reeve is definitely cool, but he doesn't come off as a sympathetic or fully drawn character. Note: I absolutely love the Rebus series, but I don't feel inclined to pick up the other remaining Jack Harvey-penned novels. Hope I'm not missing something, but "Blood Hunt" has done nothing but cool mine a little. Ouch. Sorry, Ian.