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UK Holidays - Strip Jack
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List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $7.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780312965143
ISBN: 0312965141
Label: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 269
Publication Date: 1998-05-15
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Studio: St. Martin's Paperbacks
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Editorial Reviews:
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When respected MP Gregor Jack is caught in a police raid on an Edinburgh brothel and his flamboyant wife Elizabeth suddenly disappears, John Rebus smells a set-up. And when Elizabeth's badly beaten body is found, Rebus is suddenly up against a killer who holds all the cards..
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not Rankin at his best
Comment: Somehow this Inspector Rebus mystery doesn't quite measure up to others in the series for me. Rankin takes the usually strong features of his novels--story line, quirky characters and interesting backdrops--either too far or not far enough in development. The storyline is overly meandering and the conclusion not particularly convincing. Rankin has made his protagonist, Rebus, more intrusive and obnoxious than curious and perservering. This is a moment in Rebus' career that I wouldn't have minded missing.
Having said all that, I will continue to be a Rankin fan, particularly of his more recent novels.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A slight addition to an excellent series.
Comment: STRIP JACK is not one of the stronger books in the "Rebus" series. In this one, Rebus becomes interested in the trials and tribulations of an MP who is caught during a raid on a brothel. This leads to a couple of murders that may or may not be related and Rebus getting involved just out of curiosity. Rankin just seems to be going through the motions on this one, the mysteries are not very interesting and relatively straight forward, Rebus's usual emotional response seems distant and he seems to be in a state of befuddlement about life, career, and even the politics involved in the case. STRIP JACK lacks the laser-like focus of Rankin's other episodes and while I don't think Rankin has written a bad Rebus novel, this one is just a filler.
Customer Rating:
Summary: best ever Rebus?
Comment: Having grown up in Scotland I've read quite a few of these out of pure nostalgia for the olde country......this one is perhaps the best I've read so far as Rankin ditches the faux working class realism of junkies and serial killers and moves into perhaps his own (and therefore most comfortable) world, that of the Range Rover driving middle classes. At heart Rebus, with his flat and his girlfriends and hi-fi, is still a middle class hero, and I can picture him having a couple of pints with Inspector Morse, even if Rankin would perhaps shudder at that thought........
Customer Rating:
Summary: Most excellent
Comment: When I chanced upon Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series I took no chances and tucked into it with gusto. The first in the series, Knots and Crosses wasn't all that, in fact it wasn't a very stron mystery. But as I went through the series one by one, the experienced stopped being a slop and became more os a joy. This book has been very entertaining and has rewarded my faith in Rankin.
The storyline and plot are structures in Rankin's novels. Not that they are bad but they are merely one of many reasons to read the book. His writing is gossipy, psychological, sometimes schizophrenic but always rewarding to the reader because it encompasses so much. This story had the best flowing narrative so far. The description of the crime scene investigation part of the story is detailed, horryfying, and fascinating, even though it is just a peripheral part of the story. The discourses on books and the literary world is also fascinating but also peripheral. This series embodies all that is great with a multifaceted explorarion of crime and crime solving with hte grit and realism of a Dashiel Hammett novel.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Each Book Gets Better
Comment: This is the fifth of the series that I've read, and all I can say is that Rankin/Rebus get better as the series grows and so does the character. Rankin does a good job of filling in the personality of Rebus and his supporting cast ('Farmer' Watson, 'Fart' Lauderdale, Brian Holmes...etc) and their working relationships.
In this book we also get a travelogue of the areas north of Edinburgh, but we also get an insight into how Rankin/Rebus feels about politics, the old and new rich, the pressure that the media can put on the police, as well as the presumption of authority.
All in all this is a fine addition to the series.
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