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frodo_wesseling's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
mariasmusings's review
1.0
I normally enjoy Ian Rankin's books, but really struggled to get my head into this one.
nwhyte's review
2.0
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2046244.html[return][return]Most of this is excellent, a tale of a specialist assassin who happens also to have a milder form of h�mophilia, trying to find out who organised his latest hit, and of a private detective hired to find and kill him for a previous assignment. The detail of pursuit around the UK and USA, getting entangled in a nasty cult with links to spooky circles in Washington, is very good. But unfortunately I was completely unconvinced by the twist-in-the-tail resolutions of both main plot strands, which spoiled what was otherwise a very enjoyable read.
migrex's review
4.0
I bought this while I was in Scotland because I wanted something by a well-known Scottish author. Rankin is famous for his crime novels (this one was originally published under a pseudonym), so I bought one, even though I'm not a big fan of that particular genre. However, I enjoyed this book a lot. I liked the change of narration amongst the characters. I liked how you are on the main character's side even though he's a hired hit man. I liked that it takes place in a lot of different places, including London, New York, Albuquerque, and Washington state. I liked that Rankin was able to pretty accurately capture the "voice" so many different characters, be they English, Scottish, New Yorker, or Texan. The only thing he could've improved on in that department would have been to not use so much of a British style of speech for those characters but it didn't detract from the story (too much). Oh, I also liked that this is a stand-alone book rather than part of a lengthy detective stories.
eowyn's review
2.0
I really like Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus books and his other novels have been pretty good, but this one just annoyed me the whole time I was reading it. There are two viewpoint characters: a British assassin and a New York PI who's chasing him. The assassin is clearly the hero, and while I like him better than the completely stereotypical fat, mean, lonely, drunken and drug-addled PI, I never cared much for him, girlfriend, an illegal arms dealer's daughter. There's too much focus on the different guns they use, they kill people and I didn't care, and then the payoff, even the final big one, was just ho hum.
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