Let It Bleed (42 page)
Authors: Ian Rankin
Daughter Sammy is now back from London and living with Patience Aitken. How does this make Rebus behave? And how does Sammy’s involvement with SWEEP further affect her relationship with her father?
Rebus is ordered to take some time off. How does Ian Rankin detail his response? What happens to Rebus’s ‘Protestant work ethic’?
What lesson does Rebus learn at the hands of Rico Briggs?
Why don’t Wee Shug’s actions in the surgery make sense to Rebus?
How lucky is Lucky?
Rebus feels that this case draws on connections and coincidences. Could the same be said for Ian Rankin’s intricate plotting in
Let It Bleed?
‘
That’s your problem, Inspector – you’re selfish, no other word for it. I think you know damned well that these obsessions of yours end up damaging everyone around you, friend, foe and civilians alike
.’ Do these words from the Farmer strike a chord with Rebus, or does he brush them aside?
Ian Rankin says that in some ways
Let It Bleed
is a return to the Scotland of his second novel,
Hide & Seek
. Would you agree?
Does
Let It Bleed
, as Ian Rankin claims, ‘celebrate our national relationship with alcohol’? If so, what is the reader supposed to make of Rebus’s signs of alcoholism? Why does
he
believe he drinks? And what does Rebus actually feel about his excessive drinking?
Is much of what Rebus discovers really a crime, or could it be considered instead just a sharp way of doing business?
The US edition has a different ending that ties up some of the loose ends, although this alternative dénouement isn’t offered here. What are the loose ends left hanging? And do they worry the reader?
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Orion Books.
First published in ebook form in 2008 by Orion Books.
This updated ebook published in 2011 by Orion Books.
Copyright © John Rebus Limited 1995
Introduction copyright © John Rebus Limited 2005
The right of Ian Rankin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 0765 1
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