Bleeding Hearts

Bleeding Hearts
Ian Rankin
Little, Brown & Company
ISBN: 0-316-00912-6
Fiction, Mystery, Crime
Reviewed by Eugen M. Bacon

Simple cover graphics belie the blade sharpness of this novel. With a taut opener and smooth writing, Ian Rankin charms the reader to a poignant point between action and drama. He permits a first person benefit into the mind of a killer. Hands to face, fingers parted, one more peep, then another and another, one cannot help but read on. Fine sentiment and wit engage well with a drawn parallel: the ice coldness of Michael Weston’s regard of a kill. Weston is an assassin, meticulous for spotless kills; not unbloodied but neat. He goes through calculating precision, one by one elimination and final selection of a lethal weapon, as if he were planning a wedding. He is a Demolition Man, send off guaranteed, no mistakes.
A cat has nine lives but Weston is rapidly losing his. He certain as hell is no cat, and sooner than later, his luck is bound to flee. And what sure way than a careless hit? The job is a set-up, and Weston has to pull all little tricks from his sack to barely walk intact from the crime scene. Hit man turned target.
Ian Rankin’s writing is most defined, dialogue flows easy. Victims are personal, affable even. In Bleeding Hearts, he makes easy a complex plot to stamp a scintillating power of narration that catapults him to international acclaim, and steers readers to something beyond containment.