Strip Jack (39 page)

What do you think about Rebus as a character? If you have read several or more novels from the series, discuss how his character is developed.

If Rebus has a problem with notions of ‘pecking order’ and the idea of authority generally, what does it say about him that he chose careers in hierarchical institutions such as the Army and then the police?

How does Rebus relate to women: as lovers, flirtations, family members and colleagues?

Do the flashes of gallows humour as often shown by the pathologists but sometimes also in Rebus’s own comments increase or dissipate narrative tension? Does Rebus use black comedy for the same reasons the pathologists do?

Do Rebus’s personal vulnerabilities make him understanding of the frailties of others?

How does the characterisation of Rebus compare to other long-standing popular detectives from British authors such as Holmes, Poirot, Morse or Dalgleish? And are there more similarities or differences between them?

Operation Creeper doesn’t quite pan out as planned. When Rebus and his colleagues raid the brothel that’s masquerading as a respectable Georgian house in Edinburgh’s New Town, inside they find Gregor Jack, a popular Independent MP, and outside an unexpected and overexcited pack of national newspaper journalists baying for blood. Rebus, already conflicted about the raid, feels sorry for the charismatic Jack (who hasn’t given in to temptation, after all? And, anyway, aren’t there worse forms of prostitution than whoring?). But when Jack’s wife Elizabeth disappears only to turn up soggy and very dead, Rebus has to confront the possibility that perhaps he’s been taken in once again by a winsome public image and a firm handshake, not to mention a mutual love of whisky.

Despite the efforts of the new Chief Inspector to distract him with what appears to be a spurious case of theft, and the deepening of his own personal relationship with Dr Patience Aitken, Rebus believes that to get to the root of the scandal that is unfurling in the constituency of North and South Esk, he must endeavour to discover just who it is that wants to humiliate Jack and, more importantly, why.

But the relationships between Liz Jack, part of the influential Ferrie family, her cronies and her husband aren’t quite as anticipated, and soon Rebus discovers
that Liz and her posh pals – the Pack, the ‘spokes on a bicycle wheel’ – enjoyed life in a very fast lane, one where old allegiances can count for more than the paper ties of a marriage licence.

In one of Ian Rankin’s most carefully plotted novels to date, an intricate story unfolds where chance meetings, faded dreams, broken alibis, secret liaisons and embarrassing moments from the past combine to lead back inevitably to unbreakable school ties, a language of friendship that Rebus must work hard to grasp.

Ian Rankin calls
Strip Jack
one of his most Scottish works – what is the evidence for this?

Ian Rankin says that with
Strip Jack
his ‘long apprenticeship’ as a writer of detective fiction was nearing its end. Is this an overly harsh comment?

‘An Establishment establishment’ is how Rebus describes the brothel. Discuss the implications of this.