Strip Jack

click here for more details, find new or used items	Ian Rankin New from £0.01 Used from £0.01 Pages: 304 (Paperback) ISBN: 0752877232 Pub: Orion Pub date: 2005-09-01 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 12888

Reader Reviews:

Slow Start VERY fast and exciting finish (1/1 people found this helpful)

Well, Rebus is back in this great book.

A Scottish MP is caught in a brothel, it all seems a fair cop at the start but it soon becomes apparent something is rather fishy. The papers have been tipped off about this and are onto the MP (Jack) like a flash.

This starts of a small plot of a group of scholl friends who have grown up and are a bit of a incestiouos.

The book started off slowley (for me anyways) but it starts hotting up and then its one of the best finishes to a Rankin book so far.

stripped bare (1/1 people found this helpful)

I watched a documentary recently with Ian Rankin on BBC 4 I think and thought Id try a Rebus novel. I had picked a couple up in a charity shop so gave one (fleshmarket close) a try and loved it. Now im quite bad at collecting - in that once i have one i need them all - and now 4 weeks later ive finished my third Rebus - Strip Jack and am waiting for the last 2 through the mail.

I guess im trying to say - buy them and read them - i intend to read them all - over the next year or so.
Strip Jack is just as good as the others I read - though the first book (knots and crosses)- gives you a bit more insight into the character as it was probably written as a stand alone before Rankin got the nod from his publishers.

The fourth Rebus (1/1 people found this helpful)

This is another great Rebus novel and is better than the previous three. It is full of humour with loads of one-liners and puns.

The title "Strip Jack" refers to the MP Gregor Jack who is caught at the beginning of the book in a police (polis) raid on an Edinburgh brothel. It seems he has been set up by someone who is trying to strip him of everything he has worked for. Rebus keeps an interested eye on Mr. Jack but becomes further involved when his wife goes missing and is later found dead. Follow Rebus' thought processes as he solves the case.

And all this is set in Rebus's Edinburgh and the surrounding area including trips into the highlands.

A great read for a bargain price!

Fourth Rebus mystery - a good story, well told (9/10 people found this helpful)

The fourth of Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels, and one which I found stylistically unsettling. It opens with a police raid on a brothel and the discovery of an MP, caught in apparent flagrante. The case takes on its inevitable sensational aspect as the tabloid press seek to exploit the potential, but for the police matters become somewhat stalled by a brutal murder. Is the murder linked to the MP's problems and his collapsing world, or is it a separate, distinct crime, mundane but for its violence?

Rankin has Rebus quitting Edinburgh for a Scottish tour. He will range from Fife to the Highlands. In the process it becomes an almost 'cosy' little mystery as the investigation takes in the MP's world, a world of success and cronyism. However, it's also a novel which explores the nature of relationships, of infidelity, loyalty, and jealousy - it looks at love, at lust, at the problem deciding whether or not you can cope with having to share space with another human being ... or cope with not being able to share that space.

The plot gets a bit too fluid in places - Rebus seems to have carte blanche to roam off his patch and make use of resources from other Scots police forces. Rankin's approach contrasts with that of some eminently successful English crime writers, who create believable small villages or rural patches (think St.Mary Mead or Midsomer) in which the death rate is far in excess of Baghdad's. You sense that he feels Edinburgh is too claustrophobic an environment, that is can't sustain sensational murder after sensational murder.

Rankin is a better writer when he stays within Edinburgh - 'Strip Jack' feels a bit forced in places, a bit up-market. Nevertheless, it's a good story well told (as usual).

Spoken Word Award (0/5 people found this helpful)

The excellent audiobook version of 'Strip Jack', read by James Macpherson, recently (Sept 2003) won the award in the Crime / Thriller' category of The Spoken Word Awards 2003. Very well deserved. A compelling story and a brilliant and entertaining reading.

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