Jack Harvey

Jack Harvey is a pen name used by Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin for three standalone thrillers -- Witch Hunt (1993), Bleeding Hearts (1994), and Blood Hunt (1995) -- published while his Inspector Rebus novels were still finding their audience. Rankin wanted to write faster, more violent, more overtly commercial thrillers than the Rebus books, built around international conspiracies and lone dangerous protagonists rather than Edinburgh police work, and felt that publishing them under his own name risked confusing readers about what kind of writer he was. He named the pseudonym after his newborn son Jack and his wife Miranda's maiden name, Harvey.

Each Jack Harvey novel is self-contained, with a different lead character: an MI5 officer hunting an assassin in Witch Hunt, a haemophiliac contract killer confronting his past in Bleeding Hearts, and a former SAS soldier investigating his brother's death in Blood Hunt. None connect to Rebus, Malcolm Fox, or any other Rankin series.

Once the Rebus novels made Rankin a bestselling name, his authorship of the Harvey books became public knowledge, and all three were reissued under his own name, sometimes collected together as The Jack Harvey Novels. Rankin wrote no further books as Jack Harvey after the mid-1990s; the identity exists solely as a publishing footnote in an otherwise prolific career built on Rebus.