Witch Hunt

August 23, 2004
In this rather tepid thriller, Britain's security services are thrown into a tizzy thanks to the mysterious female superassassin known as Witch, who changes disguises and personae at the drop of a hat, carrying out hits and gravitating ominously toward the vulnerable heads of state at a London summit. Witch should be a potent femme fatale, combining female penchants for dressup and masquerade, social infiltration and sexual manipulation with male tendencies toward violence and lone-wolf alienation. But Rankin's attempts to get inside her head fall a bit flat. Glamorous on the outside, this lady assassin is dull on the inside; Witch has a touch of feminist outrage but spends most of her time dourly mulling over the details of upcoming hits. The novel often ditches her to take up the richer psychologies of the detectives tracking her, the incessant bureaucratic infighting and turf battles among various police and intelligence agencies, and a knockabout romance between an English spy-bloke and a French spy-gamine on Witch's trail. Rankin (Resurrection Men
, etc.) is more comfortable with drawing-room mystery than spy thriller here; much of the action is interior, revolving around probing interviews and crossword-puzzle clues, and the terrorist-spectacular plot eventually deflates into a family melodrama. Rankin piles on lots of absorbing assassin and police procedural sleuthing, but it's all in pursuit of a routine case. Agent, Peter Robinson.

May 15, 2004
In this departure from the Inspector Rebus mysteries, originally written under a pseudonym and never available here, three detectives track a clever assassin named Witch.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2004
Creator of the Inspector Rebus novels and the number-one-selling mystery author in Great Britain, Rankin features a fresh dossier of detectives in this gritty, multilayered yarn about an ingenious femme fatale. When two ships sink on the same night--one near Folkestone, England, the other off Calais, France--retired intelligence technician Dominic Elder fears the return of his former nemesis, Witch, a crafty, cold-blooded assassin who slips in and out of foreign countries without a ripple of evidence in her wake. Rankin displays his knack for crackling dialogue as Scotland Yard Special Branch detectives Doyle and Greenleaf and neophyte intelligence technician Barclay compete for clues to Witch's whereabouts. Information from an irascible lorry driver, an edgy French cartoonist, and a Dutch terrorist leads the detectives (joined by spirited French internal security agent Dominique Herault) ever closer, as the assassin works out the details of her deadly--and deeply personal--plan. Though the Edgar-winning Rankin is best known for vividly portraying the criminal underbelly of Edinburgh (he's friendly with a cadre of Scottish law-enforcement officials), this time he tries his hand at rendering the nefarious in England, Germany, and France. Regardless of locale, Rankin's hard-boiled tales are compelling, original, and chilling as a Scottish mist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2004
Rankin, who is widely acclaimed for his John Rebus mysteries (e.g., A Question of Blood), has also written several non-Rebus mysteries under the pseudonym Jack Harvey. Originally published in England in 1993 and released here for the first time, this Harvey novel reflects the strengths of the Rebus series: memorable characters, a complex and intriguing plot, and a strong sense of place, plus whiffs of Le Carr and Deighton. Three British intelligence officers pursue a mysterious female assassin, code-named Witch, who has just entered the country, but they know almost nothing about her, including her target. In addition to being a mistress of disguises, she taunts them with clues, kills once, and will surely kill again. Politics, interagency rivalries, and clashing personalities all complicate matters as tension builds. This espionage thriller/mystery will please Rankin's fans and should attract many new readers to his other works. Highly recommended for all suspense collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/04.]--Roland Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.