From Publishers Weekly
In this rather tepid thriller, Britain's security services are thrown into a tizzy thanks to the mysterious female superassassin known as Witch, who changes disguises and personae at the drop of a hat, carrying out hits and gravitating ominously toward the vulnerable heads of state at a London summit. Witch should be a potent femme fatale, combining female penchants for dressup and masquerade, social infiltration and sexual manipulation with male tendencies toward violence and lone-wolf alienation. But Rankin's attempts to get inside her head fall a bit flat. Glamorous on the outside, this lady assassin is dull on the inside; Witch has a touch of feminist outrage but spends most of her time dourly mulling over the details of upcoming hits. The novel often ditches her to take up the richer psychologies of the detectives tracking her, the incessant bureaucratic infighting and turf battles among various police and intelligence agencies, and a knockabout romance between an English spy-bloke and a French spy-gamine on Witch's trail. Rankin (Resurrection Men, etc.) is more comfortable with drawing-room mystery than spy thriller here; much of the action is interior, revolving around probing interviews and crossword-puzzle clues, and the terrorist-spectacular plot eventually deflates into a family melodrama. Rankin piles on lots of absorbing assassin and police procedural sleuthing, but it's all in pursuit of a routine case. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Bookmarks Magazine
Witch Hunt, a combo police procedural and spy thriller, may or may not live up to Edgar Award-winning Rankin’s reputation, depending on who’s doing the writing. The Providence Journal offers up high praise, complimenting Rankin on his intricate backdrop, inventive plots, and insight into “bureaucratic skullduggery” and “policies of protocol and inter-agency hierarchies.” The Washington Post, by contrast, compares Witch Hunt to works by John le Carré “in his glory days”—but without le Carré’s literary finesse and sense of history. Until Rankin returns to his unparalleled form, here is a tepid thriller that, at least, won’t inspire terrorist nightmares. See our profile of Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series in “Great Mystery Series” on page 34.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.


From Booklist
Creator of the Inspector Rebus novels and the number-one-selling mystery author in Great Britain, Rankin features a fresh dossier of detectives in this gritty, multilayered yarn about an ingenious femme fatale. When two ships sink on the same night--one near Folkestone, England, the other off Calais, France--retired intelligence technician Dominic Elder fears the return of his former nemesis, Witch, a crafty, cold-blooded assassin who slips in and out of foreign countries without a ripple of evidence in her wake. Rankin displays his knack for crackling dialogue as Scotland Yard Special Branch detectives Doyle and Greenleaf and neophyte intelligence technician Barclay compete for clues to Witch's whereabouts. Information from an irascible lorry driver, an edgy French cartoonist, and a Dutch terrorist leads the detectives (joined by spirited French internal security agent Dominique Herault) ever closer, as the assassin works out the details of her deadly--and deeply personal--plan. Though the Edgar-winning Rankin is best known for vividly portraying the criminal underbelly of Edinburgh (he's friendly with a cadre of Scottish law-enforcement officials), this time he tries his hand at rendering the nefarious in England, Germany, and France. Regardless of locale, Rankin's hard-boiled tales are compelling, original, and chilling as a Scottish mist. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
In a fascinating stand-alone novel that's a combination of police procedural and political thriller, Ian Rankin, author of the bestselling Inspector Rebus series, details the breakneck hunt for a terrifyingly inventive female assassin known only as Witch.

The British police investigate when a pleasure craft explodes, killing two men. The French police are working on a similar incident involving four fishermen. Then a bright young man in the Collator's Office, who spends his days feeding data into a computer that looks for patterns in seemingly unrelated crimes, notices unexpected similarities between the two cases. That's when they call in Dominic Elder, an old-timer from the Cold War era (when operatives relied on paper files and legwork rather than computers), who has been forced into retirement because of his outdated ideas. Now authorities wonder if a so-called "crackpot theory" -- the idea that many random terrorist attacks are the work of a single, brilliant woman agent -- may be right after all.

This time, the normally elusive Witch wants to be noticed, wants to direct attention to an obvious target: the upcoming summit in London, where seven heads of state will gather in a week's time. To the police and intelligence officers, this means the Witch is getting overconfident. But Elder suspects this ingenious killer is hiding her real agenda and decides to send an ambitious but untried agent into the field to "stir the pot" and flush out his prey. This classic gambit could mean the end of Elder's chances to find the Witch￯﾿ﾽor bring him face to face with a killer who made the chase personal years ago. Sue Stone

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"She is Witch, and she makes for alluring prey, teasing her pursuers as she eludes them, hunting her victims with breathtaking creativity, beguiling the most powerful men in the world with her dark beauty and cunning. Witch is wanted by the world's most elite police agencies, doggedly pursued by three very different detectives - one woman and two men. Two are at the beginning of their careers, one is staking a lifetime's experience on tracking Witch down, and all three display a professional determination that veers dangerously close to obsession. Working with and against one another, crossing paths and crossing swords, the detectives on her trail must stop her before she pulls off her most daring and ingenious assignment yet, a killing whose repercussions will reverberate throughout the world." The intricate deceits and confidences that lead Witch to her latest target inspire an elaborate chase, but no matter how fast her pursuers track her, no matter how expertly they anticipate her every move, Witch always remains one step ahead of the game. With time growing short, it seems she will elude authorities again - but an unexpected link to her own mysterious past may upset her streak of calculated terror.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In this rather tepid thriller, Britain's security services are thrown into a tizzy thanks to the mysterious female superassassin known as Witch, who changes disguises and personae at the drop of a hat, carrying out hits and gravitating ominously toward the vulnerable heads of state at a London summit. Witch should be a potent femme fatale, combining female penchants for dressup and masquerade, social infiltration and sexual manipulation with male tendencies toward violence and lone-wolf alienation. But Rankin's attempts to get inside her head fall a bit flat. Glamorous on the outside, this lady assassin is dull on the inside; Witch has a touch of feminist outrage but spends most of her time dourly mulling over the details of upcoming hits. The novel often ditches her to take up the richer psychologies of the detectives tracking her, the incessant bureaucratic infighting and turf battles among various police and intelligence agencies, and a knockabout romance between an English spy-bloke and a French spy-gamine on Witch's trail. Rankin (Resurrection Men, etc.) is more comfortable with drawing-room mystery than spy thriller here; much of the action is interior, revolving around probing interviews and crossword-puzzle clues, and the terrorist-spectacular plot eventually deflates into a family melodrama. Rankin piles on lots of absorbing assassin and police procedural sleuthing, but it's all in pursuit of a routine case. Agent, Peter Robinson. (Sept. 21) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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