Strip Jack (40 page)
Authors: Ian Rankin
How many different types of politics are dealt with in
Strip Jack
?
How does Ian Rankin subvert a well-known quotation from Jane Austen?
Is Chief Inspector Lauderdale really oblivious to Rebus’s attempts at irony over the Case of the Lifted Literature, or is it more the case that Lauderdale is winding Rebus up? In any event, who comes out on top?
Consider the way in which Ian Rankin weaves together the serious murder case with the trivial-seeming book-theft case.
What does Rebus’s evening with Brian Holmes and Nell say about his own attitudes to socialising?
Bearing in mind Rebus’s sometimes fraught relationship with brother Michael, does he identify with Gregor’s response to his own embarrassingly behaved sibling? How sympathetic is Rebus to Gregor’s desire to distance himself from his past?
Rebus doesn’t seem to have kept in touch with many of his old friends; is this why he finds the bonds and the motivations that govern this group of tightly knit friends to be simultaneously perplexing and fascinating?
There’s more forensic evidence presented in
Strip Jack
than in previous Rebus books; how does Ian Rankin approach this?
Ian Rankin’s use of Scottish slang is taken to a new level. Does this cause a problem for readers unacquainted with the idiom?
Is it necessity or merely symbolic that
Strip Jack
ends with a fire that burns down the fictitious Great London Road Police Station?
First published in Great Britain in 1992 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 1992
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 0768 2
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