Strip Jack

Inspector Rebus novel number 4. This one is set in Edinburgh, around a clique of people that had been friends in earlier school days, a couple of women and four guys. The story is woven around the personalities of members of the group, most prominent being Gregor Jack who had wormed his way to the position of a Member of Parliament.

The story opens with a raid at a high-class brothel in which Jack was one of the men “caught.” It looks like he’s been set up, so the question becomes why and by whom. Then his wife is found murdered and dumped in a river, and a high profile murder investigation starts. As the plot unfolds, we are told the reason Jack visited the brothel was to see his estranged sister. Someone had called him and told him his sister was there. This was how he was set up, and it was one of the members of the clique, someone that happened to be in love with his wife.

As the investigation winds to a conclusion, it turns out that it was Jack himself that murdered his wife in the course of a violent argument following the publication of his scandalous visit to the brothel. He is about to murder the man responsible for that blow to his public image when the cops turn up. In the scuffle that follows, he ends up jumping into another river, in an apparent suicide mission rather than facing arrest and imprisonment.

August 22, 2015. Review initially written in 2011. Novel first published in 1992 by Orion, this edition being published also by Orion in 2005; ISBN 0-75287-723-2.