Bleeding Hearts by Ian Rankin: book review

Bleeding Hearts (1994) is a crime novel written under Ian Rankin’s pseudonym Jack Harvey. It starts in London, England.

The narrator is British Mark Wesley, posing as an export-import businessman. He is really Michael Weston, hired ‘assassinator’ – a pro, a skilled marksman. He has his telescopic sight on 39-year-old TV reporter and freelance investigative journalist Eleanor Ricks. She is the wife of actor Freddy Ricks and the mother of 17-year-old Archie. Ricks has just interviewed Molly Prendergast, the Secretary of State for Social Security. Does he have the wrong woman in his sights?

Why would Weston’s anonymous employer want to pay him to assassinate Eleanor Ricks? Why did the police arrive so quickly after the murder of Ricks? Weston the hitman – known as the Demolition Man – has more questions than Bob Broome, the Chief Inspector of Police.

What do the police know? They know the hitman left the scene in an ambulance, saying he was a haemophiliac – a bleeder. There was a business card in the ambulance with the name Gerald Flitch, and they have a wrong address but a genuine credit card.

Michael Weston and Belinda Harrison (Bel), the daughter of Weston’s gun supplier, begin their own investigation. When her father Max is killed, they know someone, other than the chief inspector, is after them.

Written in the first person by narrator Michael Weston, the hitman, and in the third person, this unusual style is at first distracting, but fortunately the plot takes over as readers try to unravel the sub-plots within the plots. The character development is quite good and the ending is better.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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