Publisher’s write-up:
‘Witch is a terrorist – on of
the best – but this job is going to test even her to the very limit. This time
her cold calculation may desert her just when she needs it most.
One her tail are three very
different detectives – one woman, two men. Two at the beginning of their
careers; one staking a lifetime’s experience on tracking Witch down, following
a hunch to the end.
Dominic Elder’s hunch takes
him from England to Europe and back, but the clues that solve the biggest
crimes, dig out the deepest secrets, are often the smallest ones – ones that
only the junior sleuths, fresh out of spy school, pick up. But will he listen?’
Witch Hunt is a spy thriller
novel written by Ian Rankin under the name Jack Harvey, a name he used in the
90s for writing thriller novels. This book came out in the 90s and thus, the
limitations then must be kept in mind, especially when one of the characters is
supposed to be tech savvy.
The story starts with a woman
crossing the English Channel in a boat, destroying the boat but deliberately
leaving traces behind. Back in the UK, this interests Dominic Elder – a retired
MI5 operative, who has a history with the modus operandi of this kind of a
crime, a terrorist whom he has codenamed the witch. Elder comes out of retirement
and sends the young Michael Barclay off to France to trace the Witch while
focusing on what is the terrorist’s intent in the UK. Amidst all this, is also
the tussle between different agencies – the MI5, the MI6, local police, the
French secret service (DST), etc.
The premise of the plot was interesting
and being a crime novel writer, the author maintained the mystery around the Witch
character, perhaps a tad too long for a thriller novel. The initial few pages
are gripping which kept me curious enough to gather more details about the Witch.
However, too many characters were introduced in the initial pages – it took a
while for the main character Elder to appear, and then there was Barclay – who reported
to his boss Joyce Parry, and on the other side, there were detectives Greenleaf
and Doyle, along with several characters introduced on both sides of the
English Channel during Elder and Barclay’s travels in England and France,
respectively. I could focus only on four characters when it came to their character
development and could not devote attention to the principal antagonist, the Witch,
either.
Red herrings are great for a police
procedural whodunnit novels, but not so for a thriller. Considering the
way this novel ended, a lot of events were unnecessary or were mere
distractions. This meant that the book need not have been as long as what it turned
out to be. I normally enjoy Rankin’s writing, but I realise that it happens
when I enjoy the plot along with it, in this book I felt that he was
unnecessarily verbose.
This was a book where I felt a
good start was ruined by the way it carried on – normally I like plots that
revolve around the world and in fact, I enjoyed one of the earlier Jack Harvey
thriller novels, namely Blood Hunt, to the extent that I thought
perhaps, Jack Harvey is a better writer than Ian Rankin and that
thriller novels are his calling. I might try the last remaining Jack Harvey novel
in due course but for now, I would prefer going back to his Inspector Rebus novels.
On that note, I would award this
book a rating of four on ten.
Rating – 4/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
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