THE HANGED MAN by Ian Rankin

"The killer wandered through the fairground."
What a great opening sentence; it transmits a good idea of the setting and subject of this short story. I enjoy Rankin's writing because all I read from this piece is so natural and often I can find the flow of a piece to be choppy and unrelated, this aspect of his diction gives me good ideas and lessons that I should apply to my writing. Also, there are a few slang words from English or Scottish dialect that doesn't hurt to learn; "punter." The title is appropriate and insightful; the hanged man is a tarot card that is referred to in the story, and it is a metaphor for what the protagonist discovers in the end. The tone is wonderful, again to refer to the opening; I see a dark fairground and the mood is solemn and quiet, the man who we follow is named Mort, this is a clever name for this character because it is resembling to the French verb "mort" which means to die, unfortunately I think I saw this same 'trick' used in Adam Sandler's Click. There are more puns in the piece that relate to death; "There was a stiff breeze," this gives the same characteristics of a corpse
Mort is an assassin, but he prefers the term killer simply because he wants to keep it simple and that is exactly what he is, a killer. Once he finds his target, the dialogue they have is so believable, each of the characters emotions can be depicted with just reading their speech; they calm acceptance of the Gypsy and the frantic confusion of Mort. There is spectacular twisting at the end, which I can imagine takes a skilled writer to set up, especially in a short story.