Tied to a chair

A brief post at John McFetridge's blog caught my eye the other day. It opens:Three of my favourite authors - Denise Minna, Christopher Brookmyre and Ian Rankin - all have a scene in one of their books in which someone is tied to a chair and killed. In the Rankin the guy tied to the chair manages to get to a window and jump out, but he's impaled on a fence.(Doesn't Rankin's gambit sound like