Deep Down

Deep Down by Lee Child
A Jack Reacher Story

Summoned by Military Intelligence to Washington, D.C., Reacher is sent undercover. The assignment that awaits him: The army is meeting with its Capitol Hill paymasters for classified talks on a new, state-of-the-art sniper rifle for U.S. forces. But vital details about the weapon are leaking—straight from the Capitol and probably into the hands of unidentified foreign arms dealers. The prospect of any and every terrorist, mercenary, or dictator’s militia getting their hands on the latest superior firepower is unthinkable. That’s where Reacher comes in. His task: infiltrate the top-secret proceedings and smoke out the mole. His target: a quartet of high-powered Army political liaison officers—all of them fast-track women on their way to the top.

According to his bosses, it’s a zero-danger mission. No need to draw a gun . . . just chat over drinks. But Reacher knows that things are rarely what they seem. And he’s learned the hard way never to underestimate an opponent. Or four. Lessons that will come in handy when he starts digging for the truth—and gets his hands a lot dirtier than he expected.

--Deep Down
by Lee Child
Copyright © 2012 by Lee Child

My Review

The time:  1986. 

The place: Washington, D.C. 

The problem: Someone is leaking classified information regarding designs on a new sniper rifle.

The solution: Send in Jack Reacher.

Reacher is sent to sit in on talks about the designs on a new sniper rifle, but he’s not there to sell the thing.  He’s there to figure out which of the four Army political liaison officers is the mole.  Based on the information he’s given, he has a pretty good idea which one it is.  But when she’s killed in a motor vehicle accident, his attention switches to the other three.  He needs to figure out which is the guilty party quickly before he’s the next one going to the morgue.

This is the second short story released by Lee Child and while perhaps not as enjoyable as the first short (Second Son), it’s still a glimpse into Jack Reacher’s past and a chance to learn what makes him such a great investigator.  If you’re a fan, I don’t even need to tell you to buy it because you will anyway (like I did).  If you’ve never read any of the Jack Reacher books, this story should be enough to whet your whistle and make you want to read more.

But you’d better read fast.  His 17^th novel, A Wanted Man comes out September 11^th.

I give this story FOUR STARS.

The Affair

The Affair by Lee Child

Everything starts somewhere. . . .For elite military cop Jack Reacher, that somewhere was Carter Crossing, Mississippi, way back in 1997. A lonely railroad track. A crime scene. A coverup.

A young woman is dead, and solid evidence points to a soldier at a nearby military base. But that soldier has powerful friends in Washington.

Reacher is ordered undercover—to find out everything he can, to control the local police, and then to vanish. Reacher is a good soldier. But when he gets to Carter Crossing, he finds layers no one saw coming, and the investigation spins out of control.

Local sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux has a thirst for justice—and an appetite for secrets. Uncertain they can trust one another, Reacher and Deveraux reluctantly join forces. Reacher works to uncover the truth, while others try to bury it forever. The conspiracy threatens to shatter his faith in his mission, and turn him into a man to be feared.

--The Affair
by Lee Child
Copyright © Sep 27, 2011 by Lee Child
Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House

My Review

In my last Lee Child review for Worth Dying For, I was less than enthused by Reacher’s motivation for sticking around and resolving the mystery. May I say my enthusiasm has been revitalized.

In The Affair, Jack Reacher is talking to us, telling us the story of how he got kicked out of the Army. I knew, from book one, that Reacher’s departure from the Army was not a voluntary thing and I wanted to know how it all came about. And now, with this story, we know.

Reacher is sent undercover to the town of Carter Crossing, Mississippi to help another Army investigator figure out if anyone from Fort Kelham, the nearby Army base, is responsible for the death of a local girl. The other investigator, Munro, will work on base while Reacher works the town. He meets the town sheriff, Elizabeth Deveraux and, being a former Marine Chief Warrant Officer herself, easily makes Reacher for who he is. They team up to figure out the mysteries surrounding Fort Kelham and the mystery of the deaths of five—not one, but five local people.

I think Reacher took justice a little bit too far in this story, but I guess that’s just Reacher’s way, and he had to take it too far in order to achieve the end result—his removal from the U.S. Army. There’s also some intriguing foreshadowing… Backshadowing? Hindsight? Flashback? … okay, I don’t know if the right term exists, but there’s a hint toward the events that take place in Child’s first book, The Killing Floor. It almost—almost—makes me want to pick up the first book and read it again.

I’m glad to finally have the answer to one of the mysteries that surround Jack Reacher, namely why he left the Army. I was also happy to see Frances Neagley make an appearance. She’s another intriguing mystery and I hope to see her again in a future Reacher novel, however, in a recent interview, the author said that is unlikely to happen.

I give this story FOUR and a HALF STARS.




Finishing this book actually made me a little sad. Now that I’ve read all the Jack Reacher novels (in less than a year, mind you), I have to wait at least another year for the next novel to come out. Fortunately for me, I have a lot of other novels to fill that void. But I’ll be watching…and waiting…

Worth Dying For

Worth Dying For by Lee Child

There’s deadly trouble in the corn country of Nebraska…and Jack Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved, decades-old case of a missing child that Reacher can’t let go.

The Duncans want Reacher gone—and it’s not just past secrets they’re trying to hide. For as dangerous as the Duncans are, they’re just the bottom of a criminal food chain stretching halfway around the world. For Reacher, it would have made much more sense to put some distance between himself and the hard-core trouble that’s bearing down on him. For Reacher, that was also impossible.

--Worth Dying For
by Lee Child
Copyright © 2010 by Lee Child
Published by Dell

My Review

All he wanted was a cup of coffee and a place to stay for the night. (Isn’t that what he always wants?) Instead, while trying to do the right thing for a woman in trouble, Jack Reacher manages to make an enemy out of the most powerful family in the county. (Isn’t that what he always does?)

The Duncans rule their corner of Nebraska with an iron fist. They own the only produce trucking company in the area, so if you’re a farmer with produce to get hauled, you call the Duncans or you don’t get your produce hauled. But shipping corn and alfalfa isn’t the company’s only business and if anyone in the area finds out what else they’re shipping, they could find themselves in a world of trouble.

So it’s in their best interest if Reacher would get out of town.

Problem is, he won’t.

He could walk away, head south toward the highway which will take him to Virginia, his intended destination and several times he’s on the verge of doing just that, but it’s the story of an eight year old girl, missing for twenty-five years, that keeps drawing him back. Children and women in trouble are two of his soft spots, and mysteries that remain unsolved bother him. So Reacher is going to stay until he gets to the bottom of the mystery, and he will get to the bottom of it, no matter who gets in his way.

In most of the previous novels in this series, Reacher always has a compelling reason to stay and figure out the mystery he’s presented with. In The Killing Floor, Reacher stays in Margrave, GA because that’s where his brother was killed, and he’s determined to find out who did it. In Die Trying, he was kidnapped and needs to get himself and his fellow kidnappee to safety. In Tripwire, the woman he loves is in danger. Et cetera, et cetera. In Worth Dying For, the reason isn’t quite so compelling. This time, it’s his own personal sense of justice that keeps him in town until the mystery is solved. And while that can be a very strong reason to stay and fight, somehow, it just didn’t feel like enough to me.

Granted, this is a good story with an interest cast of supporting characters with ulterior motives. I love the scenes with Reacher at the Courtyard Marriott and the almost-comically crossed wires the supporting characters get tangled up in. But for all its good points, it fell a little short for me.

I give this story THREE STARS.

Second Son

Second Son by Lee Child

Okinawa, 1974. Even at thirteen, Jack Reacher knows how to outwit and overpower anyone who stands in his way. And as the new kid in town, that’s pretty much everyone. His family has come to the Pacific with his father, who’s preparing for a top-secret Marine Corps operation. After receiving a rude welcome from the local military brats, Reacher and his older brother, Joe, intend to teach them a lesson they won’t forget. But it’s soon clear that there’s more at stake than pride. When his family’s future appears to come crumbling down, it’s the youngest Reacher who rises to the occasion with all the decisive cunning and bravura that will one day be his deadly trademark.

--Second Son
by Lee Child
Copyright ©August 15, 2011 by Lee Child
Published by Delacorte Press

My Review

So now we know the roots of Jack Reacher’s genius. He learned early how to think, how to observe, how to plan and how to act. He learned how to file away the smallest details and how to use that information later to his advantage.

Got a problem? Turn Jack Reacher loose and it’ll be taken care of. You may not like his methods, but they get results and that’s what matters, right?

I give this story FIVE STARS.

Second Son is available only as an e-book through Amazon.com (see link below), Barnes & Noble.com, iTunes.com and Sony.com.

Second Son also includes an excerpt from Lee Child’s forthcoming novel, The Affair, due out September 27, 2011.

Although I told myself not to, I started to read this Chapter 1 excerpt. I managed to stop myself at the end of the first scene. I don't want to get myself hooked on to this new story because one chapter isn't enough and I don't know if I can wait another six weeks to find out why Reacher would go into the Pentagon, anticipating an arrest, wearing a Class A uniform and five days of beard growth on his face. Come on! If you've got the time to prepare and put on Class As, you've got time to shave, so why didn't he shave? This is going to drive me crazy! Why did I start reading it??? Aaugh!!!

Gone Tomorrow

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

New York City. Two in the morning. A subway car heading uptown. Jack Reacher, plus five other passengers. Four are okay. The fifth isn’t. And if you think Reacher isn’t going to get involved…then you don’t know Jack.

Susan Mark was the fifth passenger. She had a lonely heart, an estranged son, and a big secret. Reacher, working with a woman cop and a host of shadowy feds, wants to know just how big a hole Susan Mark was in, how many lives had already been twisted before hers, and what danger is looming around him now.

Because a race has begun through the streets of Manhattan in a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. Susan Mark’s plain little life was critical to dozens of others in Washington, California, Afghanistan . . . from a former Delta Force operator now running for the U.S. Senate, to a beautiful young woman with a fantastic story to tell–and to a host of others who have just one thing in common: They’re all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or maybe just enough to get him killed.

--Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, Copyright ©2009 by Lee Child, published by Jove Books

My Review

Gone Tomorrow is the 13th book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.
Jack Reacher is back in New York City, riding the subway in the early hours of the morning. Being a former Military Police officer, he can’t help but study the five other passengers in his car. Four of them seem perfectly normal. The fifth, a woman, exhibits all the signs of a suicide bomber.

Reacher figures he has two choices. One, leave the train at the next stop, saving himself and leaving whomever might get caught in the blast to their fate, or two, try and stop her.

He tries to stop her.

Only the large object in her bag isn’t a bomb mechanism, but a gun. And though she initially points it at Reacher, she turns it on herself and pulls the trigger.

When the police arrive, they question everyone. The others on the train, of course, knew nothing, saw nothing. But the police believe the woman, identified as Susan Mark, passed something to Reacher just before she ended her life. She didn’t, but he can’t convince the NYPD of that. Nor can he convince the three Feds or the four shadowy “protection service” gentlemen that she didn’t. Everyone is convinced she gave him something and he can’t convince them that she didn’t. When he’s contacted by a woman named Lila Hoth (the employer of the “protection service”), he finds out that Susan Mark and she had become friends and Susan was coming to New York to deliver some information to Lila regarding a man her mother, Svetlana, met during a trip to Berlin in the early 1980’s.

She told a good story, but Reacher doesn’t quite believe her. For one thing, why would Susan drive all the way from Virginia to New York just to deliver information that could have been sent in an e-mail or relayed over the telephone. Second, Lila says she invited Susan to stay a day or two, maybe take in a show. But Susan had no overnight luggage with her. Third, Lila’s story just doesn’t add up to Reacher. But he received nothing from Susan Mark and therefore, doesn’t want to be involved.

He tries to stay out of it. Really, he does try, but everyone involved in the mysterious “it” keeps dragging him in until Reacher has no choice but to dig in and investigate. And when Jack Reacher investigates, he doesn’t stop until he gets his answers.

I give this story FOUR STARS.

And with this, believe it or not, I’m going to take a little break from my buddy Jack. I've been reading a lot of heavy stuff lately and I need some light, summer fun. Also, I have a lot of books I want to read/listen to and I need to give the others their chance to make it here on A(nother) Year in Reviews. Besides, I have only two books left in the Jack Reacher series, so I want to stretch them out a little. I figure I’ll listen to 61 Hours in late July and then Worth Dying For in September. That’ll set me up nicely for The Affair which will be released in mid-October. Can’t wait!

Nothing to Lose

Nothing to Lose by Lee Child

Two lonely towns in Colorado: Hope and Despair. Between them, twelve miles of empty road. Jack Reacher never turns back. It's not in his nature. All he wants is a cup of coffee. What he gets is big trouble. So in Lee Child’s electrifying new novel, Reacher—a man with no fear, no illusions, and nothing to lose—goes to war against a town that not only wants him gone, it wants him dead.

It wasn’t the welcome Reacher expected. He was just passing through, minding his own business. But within minutes of his arrival a deputy is in the hospital and Reacher is back in Hope, setting up a base of operations against Despair, where a huge, seething walled-off industrial site does something nobody is supposed to see . . . where a small plane takes off every night and returns seven hours later . . . where a garrison of well-trained and well-armed military cops—the kind of soldiers Reacher once commanded—waits and watches . . . where above all two young men have disappeared and two frightened young women wait and hope for their return.

Joining forces with a beautiful cop who runs Hope with a cool hand, Reacher goes up against Despair—against the deputies who try to break him and the rich man who tries to scare him—and starts to crack open the secrets, starts to expose the terrifying connection to a distant war that’s killing Americans by the thousand.

Now, between a town and the man who owns it, between Reacher and his conscience, something has to give. And Reacher never gives an inch.

--Nothing to Lose by Lee Child, Copyright ©2008 by Lee Child

My Review

Nothing to Lose is the 12th book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.

After spending the night in Hope, Colorado, Reacher heads west. He’d been in Calais, Maine, and decided to go to San Diego. Rather than catch a cross-country bus to get there in a couple days, he walks, or hitches rides, or catches a bus to get from one place to the next, slowly making his way to the south and west. He’s in no hurry. Jack Reacher is a man with no responsibilities and he has all the time in the world.

West of the town of Hope is the town of Despair. He stops in at a diner for a cup of coffee but has a hard time getting service. He eventually gets his coffee, and then he gets arrested for vagrancy and a ride back to the boundary between Hope and Despair with a stern warning not to return.

Leaving town is fine with him, but he didn’t want to go east. If the deputy had taken him to the western town border and dropped him off there, he would have happily gone on his way to San Diego. But the deputy took him to the east, backtracking Reacher’s path, and Reacher hates turning back.

Deputy Vaughn of the Hope P.D. picks him up and takes him back to town. He questions her about the unusual treatment he got in Despair and doesn’t like what he hears. He decides to defy the Despair judge’s orders and returns to do a little exploring. On his way back to Hope, he stumbles over a dead body. A young man who likely died of dehydration, he figures, but can’t tell much in the darkness. When he returns in the daylight with Vaughn, the body’s gone.

He borrows Vaughn’s truck so he can better explore the area. He drives the long way around and approaches the town from the west, where he finds a small military guard post. Now why would a small town in Colorado have a military guard post on the only road west of town manned by soldiers fresh from Iraq?

Deciding he needs to investigate even further, he returns again the next day and enters the metal processing plant. He explores the facility and before long, is apprehended by plant security. Jerry Thurman, the plant’s—and the town’s—owner decides to give Reacher a tour of the plant. He answers Reacher’s questions and though they’re perfectly plausible answers, Reacher doesn’t believe them.

Being the sort of man he is, Reacher doesn’t like unusual situations. He also doesn’t like it when people lie to him or when bodies of young men disappear. He wants to know what’s going on in Despair and he’ll do whatever it takes to expose all of Despair’s secrets.

As I read this story, I couldn’t help but emphasize with the people of Despair. They’re just living their lives, maybe not happily, but it’s not a bad life. And here comes this know-it-all former Military Policeman, butting his nose into their business, asking all sorts of questions and making demands for information. Why is there a walled-off section of the plant’s compound? Thurman flies his airplane every night…where does he go? Why does he do it? What is the military guard post guarding against? What’s in the sealed shipping containers? If the plant is doing so well, why isn’t the town prospering? Plus he’s asking a lot of other questions that have nothing to do with Despair. Why can’t this guy mind his own business?

Of course, when you reach the end of the story, you’re grateful he did butt his nose in and prevented a cataclysm of epic proportions.

I give this story THREE and a HALF STARS.

Bad Luck & Trouble

Bad Luck & Trouble by Lee Child

From a helicopter high above the California desert, a man is sent free-falling into the night. On the streets of Portland, Jack Reacher is pulled out of his wandering life and plunged into the heart of a conspiracy that is killing old friends . . . and the people he once trusted with his life.

Reacher is the ultimate loner–no phone, no ties, no address. But a woman from his old military unit has found him using a signal only the eight members of their elite team would know. Then she tells him a terrifying story about the brutal death of a man they both served with. Soon Reacher is reuniting with the survivors of his team, scrambling to unravel the sudden disappearance of two other comrades. But Reacher won’t give up–because in a world of bad luck and trouble, when someone targets Jack Reacher and his team, they’d better be ready for what comes right back at them.

--Bad Luck & Trouble by Lee Child, Copyright ©2007 by Lee Child

My Review

Bad Luck & Trouble is the 11th book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.

Reacher is in Portland, checking his bank balance at an ATM (he finally got an ATM card!) and discovers a discrepancy. There’s too much money in the account. One thousand thirty dollars too much, to be exact. One-Oh-Three-Oh. He knows that number. One of his old team is reaching out for his help. A call to the bank gives him the answer. It’s Frances Neagley (from Without Fail), a member of an elite Army Military Police special investigation team he headed up for two years.

He joins Neagley in Los Angeles where she tells him some bad news. Another member of their team, Calvin Franz, was found dead in the desert outside L.A. (you might remember him from The Enemy). He was murdered, pushed out of a helicopter. The bad news doesn’t end there…she’s tried contacting all the members of their old team and none of them so far have responded. No one but Reacher. We need to reunite the old team, she says, so we can find out what’s going on.

Eventually, two more members of the team find them, Carla Dixon and David O’Donnell. Tony Swann, Manuel Orosco and Jorge Sanchez remain missing. Together, the four of them begin to piece together the few clues they have…a confusing series of figures, a list of five names, and a note scribbled on a napkin. From the figures, they divine the number 650 is important, but how it relates is anyone’s guess. Of the list of names, they figure the first is someone’s real name followed by four aliases. They decide one of their four friends ran into a situation and called for help from the three that lived closest. But which one called on the others is another unknown. Since Manuel Orosco and Jorge Sanchez ran a casino security firm in Las Vegas, they figure the numbers have something to do with the casinos, so they go to Vegas. But Vegas proves to be a waste of time. Except for the man who tried to kill them on a deserted side street.

That’s when things get interesting.

Who is this almost-killer? Who does he work for? What’s his connection—is there a connection?—to any of their missing friends? Who is the man with the four aliases and how does he figure in?

With the dead man’s identity known, they’re able to start putting the pieces together. And the picture isn’t a pretty one. But in the end, the bad guys find out exactly why the old unit’s motto used to be, and still is, “You don’t mess with the Special Investigators.”

I think it’s nice that Reacher got to reunite with his old friends, even if some of them are, sadly, unable to join the party. It’s almost too bad that they part ways at the end of the story. I’d love to see the four of them working together again in the future. But even though I’m pretty sure that won’t happen, I’m also pretty sure we’ll be seeing Frances Neagley again. Just a feeling…

I give this story FOUR STARS.

The Hard Way

The Hard Way by Lee Child

Jack Reacher was alone, the way he liked it, soaking up the hot, electric New York City night, watching a man cross the street to a parked Mercedes and drive it away. The car contained one million dollars in ransom money because Edward Lane, the man who paid it, would do anything to get his family back.

Lane runs a highly illegal soldiers-for-hire operation. He will use any tool to find his beautiful wife and child. And Jack Reacher is the best manhunter in the world.

On the trail of vicious kidnappers, Reacher learns the chilling secrets of his employer’s past . . . and of a horrific drama in the heart of a nasty little war. He knows that Edward Lane is hiding something. Something dirty. Something big. But Reacher also knows this: He’s already in way too deep to stop now. And if he has to do it the hard way, he will.

--The Hard Way by Lee Child, Copyright ©2006 by Lee Child

My Review

The Hard Way is the 10th book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.

It was just another night at a sidewalk café in New York City. Reacher was enjoying a cup of coffee when he saw a man cross the street, enter a car, and drive away. That’s all. Nothing special. But very significant.

The following night at the same café (the coffee was very good), a stranger approaches Reacher. Did you see a man enter a car and drive off? You did? My name is Gregory. I need you to come with me and describe him to my boss.

And so begins another Jack Reacher adventure.

Upon arriving at an apartment in The Dakota, Reacher meets Gregory’s boss, Edward Lane. After some fishing on both sides, Reacher finds out exactly what he witnessed. Lane’s wife and step-daughter were kidnapped and the ransom money was in that car. Unfortunately, Reacher can’t give much of a description because he never really saw the driver’s face. He does, however, agree to help Lane out. You might say women and children in danger are Reacher’s hot button issues. He can’t help wanting to solve their problems.

He tells Lane the kidnappers will call again, this time for more money. Lane and his men are skeptical, but eventually the phone rings with a demand for more money, five million this time. Lane pays. Reacher says the next call will demand ten million. The phone rings. They want more money, but this time, they’re asking for four and a half million. Ten and a half all together. The figure bothers Reacher. What’s the significance behind the number?

Reacher finds out Lane and his men are mercenaries and they’ve done some work for the Pentagon. A few years ago he and his men did a job in Burkina Faso, but two men didn’t return from that assignment. Now that he has a lead, Reacher knows what to do. Because one of the two men left behind died in Burkina Faso, the other returned to America. And 10.5 million is exactly half of the payment Lane received for the Burkina Faso job.

So is this a case of the man left behind seeking compensation? Or is there something else going on that Reacher doesn’t know about…yet? Because Reacher won’t stop until he finds the truth…all of it.

Another great Jack Reacher story, but I have to admit, there was … something … about this one that felt off to me. It was everything I’d come to expect with all the twists, turns and fabulous action of a classic Lee Child novel, but I think I’m becoming too used to his style. You see, I knew from the beginning that there was going to be more behind the kidnapping than just the straightforward facts and that two seemingly unrelated events were going to be tied together the obvious way and a more obscure way that Reacher has to dig out. That’s been the pattern of most if not all the Jack Reacher novels, so maybe that’s my problem. I guess I’ll just have to deal with it because I can’t wait to start the next book.

I give this story FOUR STARS.

One Shot

One Shot by Lee Child

Six shots. Five dead. One heartland city thrown into a state of terror. But within hours the cops have it solved: a slam-dunk case. Except for one thing. The accused man says: You got the wrong guy. Then he says: Get Reacher for me.

And sure enough, ex—military investigator Jack Reacher is coming. He knows this shooter–a trained military sniper who never should have missed a shot. Reacher is certain something is not right–and soon the slam-dunk case explodes.

Now Reacher is teamed with a beautiful young defense lawyer, moving closer to the unseen enemy who is pulling the strings. Reacher knows that no two opponents are created equal. This one has come to the heartland from his own kind of hell. And Reacher knows that the only way to take him down is to match his ruthlessness and cunning–and then beat him shot for shot.

--One Shot by Lee Child, Copyright ©2005 by Lee Child, published by Bantam Dell

My Review

A man walks into an empty parking garage on a Friday evening and, with his sniper rifle, calmly shoots five people, then disappears before the police can even be called. The evidence left behind on the scene is collected, analyzed, and just six hours later, the gunman, James Barr, is arrested. A slam-dunk case.

Except…the man arrested says he didn’t do it and makes one request. “Get Jack Reacher for me.” The defense team starts looking, but Jack Reacher is no where to be found. He doesn’t have an address, a telephone number, doesn’t file taxes or own a car. How can they find someone that doesn’t seem to exist?

But Reacher does exist, and he’s already on his way. And when he arrives, he stuns Barr’s sister by declaring he’s not there to help James. He’s there to bury him.

Only…as Reacher reviews the evidence, he begins to find problems. Little things that no one else seems to notice or question. But Reacher notices. And as he digs deeper he comes to the conclusion that Barr indeed didn’t do it.

But if he didn’t, who did? And why did they do it? And why are they framing Barr? What’s the purpose behind the assassination of five innocent, unrelated individuals?

These are the questions Reacher must answer, before he becomes the next victim.

For those of you who have read through my reviews (and if you haven’t why not?), you’ll notice this is a repeat. Because I am reading all of the Lee Child/Jack Reacher novels from the beginning of the series, I couldn’t skip over this one, even though I read it for the first time less than a year ago. I can honestly say I only half enjoyed this re-read, because I knew how the story would go but I still enjoyed all the intricate details that make up a Lee Child novel.

I give this story FOUR STARS.

The Enemy

The Enemy by Lee Child

Jack Reacher. Hero. Loner. Soldier. Soldier’s son.

An elite military cop, he was one of the army’s brightest stars. But in every cop’s life there is a turning point. One case. One messy, tangled case that can shatter a career. Turn a lawman into a renegade. And make him question words like honor, valor, and duty. For Jack Reacher, this is that case.

New Year’s Day, 1990. The Berlin Wall is coming down. The world is changing. And in a North Carolina “hot-sheets” motel, a two-star general is found dead. His briefcase is missing. Nobody knows what was in it. Within minutes Jack Reacher has his orders: Control the situation. But this situation can’t be controlled. Within hours the general’s wife is murdered hundreds of miles away. Then the dominoes really start to fall. Two Special Forces soldiers—the toughest of the tough—are taken down, one at a time. Top military commanders are moved from place to place in a bizarre game of chess. And somewhere inside the vast worldwide fortress that is the U.S. Army, Jack Reacher—an ordinarily untouchable investigator for the 110th Special Unit—is being set up as a fall guy with the worst enemies a man can have.

But Reacher won’t quit. He’s fighting a new kind of war. And he’s taking a young female lieutenant with him on a deadly hunt that leads them from the ragged edges of a rural army post to the winding streets of Paris to a confrontation with an enemy he didn’t know he had. With his French-born mother dying—and divulging to her son one last, stunning secret—Reacher is forced to question everything he once believed…about his family, his career, his loyalties—and himself. Because this soldier’s son is on his way into the darkness, where he finds a tangled drama of desperate desires and violent death—and a conspiracy more chilling, ingenious, and treacherous than anyone could have guessed.

--The Enemy by Lee Child, Copyright ©2004 by Lee Child, published by Delacorte Press

My Review

The Enemy is the 8th book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.

Come back in time to 1990 and learn a bit about Jack Reacher’s past. A few days before New Year’s, he was in Panama, working to help bring down Noriega and watching the Germans tear down the Berlin Wall when he gets orders from his boss, Colonel Leon Garber, transferring him to Fort Bird, North Carolina. He doesn’t know why he, one of the top cops in the Army, was transferred to a quiet post in North Carolina where nothing’s happening. He’s still trying to figure it out when, less than an hour into the New Year, he receives a phone call from the local civilian cops. An officer has died in a seedy, pay-by-the-hour motel, what do you want to do?

At first, Reacher doesn’t want to do anything. The officer obviously paid for the night’s company and had a heart attack in the middle of the action (what a way to go, right?). Let the civilians take care of it—after all, it happened on their turf. Then he finds out the officer is a two-star general just in from West Germany on a layover to Fort Irwin, California. Now he needs to get involved in protecting the general’s and the Army’s reputation.

He recruits Lieutenant Summer, a female officer, to go with him to the general’s wife’s home in Green Valley, Virginia, to let her know of her husband’s death. They arrive at her home…and find her dead. A burglary gone bad from the looks of it. They inform the local cops and return to Fort Bird to resume their cover-up of the circumstances in the general’s death.

It seems like a straight-forward task until Reacher realizes the general’s briefcase is missing. And a two-star would never travel without a briefcase, even if there was nothing in there but yesterday’s newspaper. He also finds it odd that the general would fly into Washington Dulles from Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, drive all the way down to North Carolina to spend the night, then (plan to) drive to Washington National to catch a flight to California and not even stop in to see his wife. It doesn’t compute, unless there was a special reason to spend the night in North Carolina. Reacher wants to know what that reason was, but the general’s travel companions—who themselves stayed in a D.C. hotel—aren’t saying. The missing briefcase and the Fort Irwin meeting agenda are the vital key in this mystery, he’s certain of that. If only he could find them.

Another phone call and another dead body. This time, it’s a soldier and he was killed on base. From the looks of it, it was a hate crime—the dead soldier was gay. A few hours later, Reacher finds out about another dead soldier in Columbia, South Carolina.

In the midst of covering up what needs to be covered up and trying to figure out exactly what went wrong for the general, the local guy and the one in Columbia, Reacher receives a call from his brother, Joe. Their mother, who lives in Paris, has broken her leg. They need to go see her. Reacher leaves a message with Garber’s office, meets his brother at Dulles and flies to Paris.

Reunited with their mother, they find out she has more than just a broken leg. She has cancer, and it’s too late to do anything about it. She has one request, and that is to spend the day with her sons. They oblige, of course, talking about old times and sharing adventures. The next day, they return to the US…where Reacher is promptly arrested. Seems he’s gone AWOL. How can I be AWOL, he asks. I called Garber’s office. Yes, but Garber’s been posted to Korea and Reacher’s new boss, Colonel Willard, did not give him permission to leave his post.

Details, details.

Reacher doesn’t like Willard from the start and sets about letting him know it. Willard wants him to back off the local guy’s death, officially classifying it as a training accident, the general simply died of a heart attack and he has no jurisdiction over the body in Columbia, but Reacher, being Reacher smells a connection between the deaths. With Lieutenant Summer’s help, he goes about disobeying orders and doing what he does best, putting everything on the line to get to the heart of the matter, even if it means he may wind up at Fort Leavenworth.

I give this story FIVE STARS.

Honestly, I wanted to turn the dial up to eleven. This is, so far, my absolute favorite book of the series.

I’m an Army brat, so I don’t know if I’d feel the same about Reacher if he had been in the Navy, Air Force (sorry, Mike!) or the Marines. But he was Army, so I have to love the guy. And while I may not know as much about Army life as a soldier would, the things I do know (and the things I don’t even realize I know) Child got absolutely spot-on right. His depth of knowledge and the accuracy of his research into the minutiae of the Army left me stunned. I am simply in awe of Lee Child and the writer in me wishes I could study at his feet.

Okay, that’s enough hero worship.

Now, I’ve already read the next book in the series, One Shot (here’s the review I wrote last year) and it wasn’t so long ago that I’ve forgotten what the story was about, so my question is, do I listen to the audio version next or skip it and go on to The Hard Way?

…pfft, as if there was any question I wouldn’t re-read one of his books!

Persuader

Persuader by Lee Child

Jack Reacher.

The ultimate loner.

An elite ex-military cop who left the service years ago, he’s moved from place to place…without family…without possessions…without commitments.

And without fear. Which is good, because trouble—big, violent, complicated trouble—finds Reacher wherever he goes. And when trouble finds him, Reacher does not quit, not once…not ever.

But some unfinished business has now found Reacher. And Reacher is a man who hates unfinished business.

Ten years ago, a key investigation went sour and someone got away with murder. Now a chance encounter brings it all back. Now Reacher sees his one last shot. Some would call it vengeance. Some would call it redemption. Reacher would call it…justice.

--Persuader by Lee Child, Copyright ©2003 by Lee Child, published by Delacorte Books

My Review

Persuader is the 7th book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.

Reacher’s back and this time, he’s in the right place at the right time to save a young college student from a kidnapping. He and the boy, Richard Beck, get away, but not before Reacher kills a cop.

A couple weeks earlier, Reacher was in Boston where he saw a dead man named Quinn. At least, he was supposed to be dead. He knows Quinn is supposed to be dead because Reacher was the one that killed him. Guess he missed. In trying to trace Quinn, he comes to the attention of the DEA, specifically Agent Susan Duffy and her team. It seems Quinn—or whatever his name is now—and his possible partner Zachary Beck, Richard’s father, are being watched by the DEA. Reacher wants Quinn, the DEA wants Beck. They team up and devise a scheme to get Reacher in to the Beck estate. Hence, the faked kidnapping.

Oh, and did I mention that Duffy and her team are not officially on the Beck case? Seems Duffy made a big mistake, so she and her team were removed from the Beck case. But they have a missing agent, Theresa Daniels, and they’re determined to get her back, no matter what the cost.

So Reacher’s in and he’s learning as much as he can about Beck’s rug importing business. The rugs, they figure, are a great way to stash incoming drugs, but in searching a shipment, they find nothing. Not even a hint of drugs. So what’s going on?

Meanwhile, it’s obvious Beck’s into some serious dirty dealings as Reacher is recruited to help get rid of a body at the Beck estate, and later on, several more. The house is on the Maine coast and there’s a strong rip tide where “bodies go in and they never come back.” One of the bodies is of the house maid, whom Reacher later finds out was a government agent. But Duffy and her people can’t find any trace of her. Who was she? And who else is after Beck?

Reacher begins to gain Beck’s trust and works his way up in the “organization.” In the process, he learns exactly what Beck and Quinn are into and figures he knows how to take out Quinn and hand Beck over to the DEA. But things never go exactly as planned and before it’s all over, Reacher finds himself within a hair’s breath of “going in and never coming back.”

Another excellent read by Lee Child, and the first one he’s written in first person. At first, I was a little bothered by this but quickly found that I like being a little deeper inside Jack Reacher’s head. It’s an interesting place to be…

** EDIT **
Um...I was wrong. This wasn't the first first-person novel. The very first book, Killing Floor was the first first-person novel...sorry!

I give this story FOUR STARS.

Without Fail

Without Fail by Lee Child

Only Jack Reacher stands between Vice President-elect Brook Armstrong and his would-be assassins. But that's enough, because taking out bad guys is what highly skilled ex-military policeman Reacher does best. Recruited by M.E. Froelich, new head of the Secret Service VP detail and former lover of Jack's late brother Joe, Reacher enlists the aid of former U.S. Army master sergeant Frances Neagley, who's as pretty as she is potentially deadly. But it is Reacher alone who finds significance in the hyphen in a death threat and checks out the odd oil on a fingerprint as he puts together the pieces and zeroes in on the killers who are after Armstrong.

From Library Journal, Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Copied from Amazon.com

--Without Fail by Lee Child, Copyright ©2002 by Lee Child, published by Jove Books

My Review

Without Fail is the 6th book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.

It’s November and Jack Reacher has arrived in Atlantic City. He wonders to himself, “What on earth possessed me to leave warm, sunny Southern California for cold, wintry Atlantic City?” He won’t be there long, though, because a lady has a job offer for him. “Would you be willing to try and assassinate the Vice President-elect?”

Reacher’s had a number of unusual jobs since leaving the military, but this one has to take the cake. The offeror is M.E. Froelich, a Secret Service agent and the woman in charge of the team responsible for protecting Brook Armstrong, the current Vice President-elect. She doesn’t tell him, but he quickly surmises that there’s been a threat against Armstrong and she wants him to test her security team. She chose him because he came with a good recommendation. Who recommended me? he asks. Your brother Joe. Seems Froelich was a former co-worker of Joe’s, and a former lover. Reacher says he’ll do it and that he’ll be in touch in ten days.

Five days later, he and Froelich meet again, where Reacher and his partner for this assignment, former Army Sergeant Frances Neagley, tell her they had Armstrong in their kill-sight three definite times and one maybe. She finally breaks down and tells him what’s going on. Armstrong has received several threats against his life. They were credible enough that Froelich wanted to test her security team. Thanks to them, they failed. Will Reacher and Neagley please help her find out who’s behind the threats?

They agree and begin to investigate. Their search quickly focuses in on the office cleaning crew since they had to be the ones to plant one of the threats in Froelich’s boss’s office. But they aren’t talking.

While Reacher and Neagley work on the mystery, Froelich must continue to protect Armstrong as he goes about his pre-inauguration duties. One of those duties, unfortunately, turns deadly. Now Reacher’s mission is personal, and when that happens, there can be only one outcome.

I give this story FOUR STARS.




In case you’re wondering, yes, I am listening to every single Lee Child book written (in order, of course). I became intrigued by this mysterious drifter named Jack Reacher and his creator, Lee Child, a little more than a year ago but it wasn’t until I got a free e-book copy of One Shot that I finally read one of the stories. To say I fell in love with Jack Reacher at that point is a bit of an exaggeration, but not too far from the truth. I went about collecting all of the stories in the series in audio and decided to start listening to them this year. I usually listen while I’m working out and find it’s a great way to focus on something other than the agony the evil elliptical and the suicide stair machine cause—seriously, my trainer told me today he wants me to “walk up the stairs at a comfortable pace” for ten-plus minutes. And I’m paying him for the pleasure of this torture?

But I digress.

IMHO, Jack Reacher is one of the greatest heroes ever created and if I wasn’t before, I am now in love with this man. Lee Child is now firmly in the Number 2 spot of my favorite Mystery/Thriller writer’s list. But the more I read (listen), the more he’s gaining on the Number 1 spot.

Echo Burning

Echo Burning by Lee Child

Jack Reacher, the vagabond freelance lawman who never hesitates to stick his nose into private business, takes his lively act to Texas, embroiling himself in what starts as a messy domestic dispute before turning far more ominous. The rugged former army cop comes to the aid of Carmen Greer, who picks him up on the side of the road one morning outside Lubbock, then asks him to kill her abusive husband. Sloop Greer is getting out of prison in a few days, and Carmen fears he will start beating her again. Reacher declines, but agrees to protect Carmen, hiring on as a cowhand at the couple's remote ranch in Echo County, Tex., far outside Pecos. Within hours of Sloop's return from prison, where he was serving time for tax evasion, violence strikes. But the victim isn't Carmen; it's Sloop. He's found shot dead, and Carmen is arrested. End of story? Hardly. Most wandering heroes would move on at this point, but not Reacher. He begins taking a hard look at both Carmen and Sloop's past, as well as local history. What he finds—ugly secrets, human suffering, political evil—is repulsive to a man who's been around as many blocks as Reacher.
From Publishers Weekly, Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Copied from Amazon.com

--Echo Burning by Lee Child, Copyright ©June 2001 by Lee Child, published by Jove Books

My Review

Echo Burning is the 5th book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.

Jack Reacher is in a hurry to get out of Lubbock, Texas. Seems the nose he broke last night at a bar belongs to a local cop. When the cop arrives at the motel with three of his fellow officers, Reacher ducks out the back window and sticks out his thumb. Luck is on his side when he’s picked up within minutes by Carmen Greer.

Carmen is heading to her home in Echo, just south of Pecos. Carmen paints a pretty nice picture of Pecos, so Reacher decides that should be his next stop before continuing on to…anywhere. But Carmen has a story, and she tells Reacher all about her youth and the abusive man she married. He feels for her, but what can he do? Kill him for me, she answers. He’s in jail and will be released in a couple days.

Of course Reacher refuses, but having worked with abuse victims in the Army, he can sense that Carmen’s telling the truth and needs help. He agrees to be hired on as a ranch hand until he can figure out what to do to help her and her daughter, Ellie, out of their situation.

Before he can settle on a plan, Carmen’s husband is released a day earlier than planned. Now Carmen is trapped. But then, almost as quickly, the trap is sprung and Carmen is arrested for killing her husband. Reacher doesn’t believe she really did it, but the proof is pretty damning. He hires Alice Aaron, a local pro-bono lawyer and together they work to put all the pieces together. They have to work quickly, because even though it looks like Carmen shot her husband, she didn’t, and Reacher is next on the killer’s list.

I had a few issues with the previous story in the series (click here
for that review). Child has definitely redeemed himself in my eyes with this one.

I give this story FOUR STARS.

Running Blind

Running Blind by Lee Child

Soldier-turned-soldier-of-fortune Jack Reacher goes after a serial killer in a conventionally but nonetheless deeply satisfying whodunit. In today's armed services, you lose even when you win--at least if you're a woman who files a sexual harassment complaint. Amy Callan and Caroline Cooke were both successful in their suits, which ended the careers of their alleged harassers. But Callan and Cooke ended up leaving the service themselves, and now they're both dead, murdered by a diabolical perp who keeps leaving behind the same crime scene--the victim's body submerged in a bathtub filled with camouflage paint--and not a single clue to the killer's identity or the cause of death. The FBI hauls in Reacher, who handled both women's complaints as an Army MP, as a prime suspect, then offers to upgrade him to a consulting investigator when their own surveillance gives him an alibi for a third killing. No thanks, says our hero, who's taken an instant dislike to FBI profiler Julia Lamarr, until the Feds' threats against his lawyer girlfriend Jodie Jacob bring him into the fold. While Reacher is pretending to study lists of potential victims and suspects and fending off the government-sponsored advances of Quantico's comely Lisa Harper, the murderer is getting ready to pounce on a fourth victim: Lamarr's stepsister Alison. This latest coup does nothing to improve relations between Reacher and the Feebees, all of them determined to prove they're the toughest hombres in the parking lot, but it does set the stage for some honest sleuthing, some treacherous red herrings, and some convincing evidence for Reacher's assertion that all that profiling stuff is just plain common sense. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Copied fromAmazon.com

--Running Blind by Lee Child, Copyright ©2000 by Lee Child, published by Putnam Books

My Review

Where do I begin?

First things first…another fabulous story.

After living in one place for three months, Jack Reacher has itchy feet. He tries to quell them with regular trips into New York City to be with Jodie, but it’s not the same. For a man who’s used to being on the move with little more than a toothbrush and the clothes on his back, being anchored to one place and struggling with the burdens of property do not sit well with him.

One evening in the city, he gets himself involved in a minor act of vigilantism against one of New York City’s many “protection” gangs that, under normal circumstances, would barely get a rise out of the NYPD (I’m guessing). But the act is witnessed by two FBI agents, agents that have him under surveillance because he fits the profile of a potential serial killer. So in trying to help out the owner of a restaurant he’s come to enjoy, he gets arrested by the FBI. They’re willing to drop the charges, however, if he’ll agree to help them hunt this killer.

Reacher says no.

Two victims so far, they tell him. Former Army soldiers, victims of sexual assault. They had successfully pressed charges against their abusers and then subsequently left the military. Reacher had met them both while working as an investigator for the Military Police. In fact, he’d met a number of the women on the list the FBI had gotten from the Army. Help us get this killer before he kills more of these women, they say to Reacher.

Reacher says no again.

You knew he would.

The strong-armed tactics the FBI employs to get his cooperation may work with most people, but not with Reacher. He thinks about a dozen steps ahead of everyone else and before they can haul him off to Quantico, he lays down a bit of groundwork. See, they made the mistake of threatening Jodie (the love of his life, from Tripwire, saying they would let that “protection” gang know about his interference and how they could get revenge on him through her. That was their first mistake and because he’s smarter than them, he’s able to remove the threat without seeming to raising a finger (it’s awesome, by the way, how he’s able to do it!).

With the threat removed, Reacher walks away, literally. He walks out of the building and off the FBI compound at Quantico. He realizes he’s enjoyed the past couple days, moving about between NYC and DC and doing something besides worry about property taxes, insurance, home maintenance, getting a job and having to mow the damned lawn. Again. Once back in New York, however, the FBI is waiting for him. The killer, who had been killing once every three weeks, has upped the interval, and he’s killed the step-sister of one of the FBI Agents involved on the case. Now Reacher has no choice but to get involved. Before, he was playing with the FBI, not wanting to get involved but enjoying his involvement nonetheless. Now playtime is over and it’s time to get serious. And when Jack Reacher gets serious, the bad guys had better watch out.

Okay, okay, a bit cliché’d, but I like it!

As much as I enjoyed this story, I had a couple problems with it.

One, at the beginning of Chapter 13, it’s Sunday morning and Reacher walks into the FBI cafeteria. On the table is coffee, a basket of Danish and doughnuts and the Sunday papers: the Washington Post, USA Today and the New York Times. The problem? USA Today doesn’t have a Sunday edition. They’ve never had one. Not now, not ever.

Two is the way Child portrays the FBI investigators as idiots. Reacher had to keep pointing Agent Blake (the agent in charge of the investigation) and the others in the right direction, telling them what to do next. For example, once they discovered the significance of the delivery box in murder victim #4’s barn, they should have automatically backtracked to the previous three victims to see if they had similar delivery boxes. They did, but only after Reacher told them to. He also had to tell them to check with the other potential victims to warn them about a delivery box. Once the box became significant, even I knew what needed to be done. The agents should have known as well without Reacher telling them. This is the FBI, for Pete’s sake. They should know how to conduct an investigation. Did their ability to free-think disappear once they finished their elite training? Also, why would they keep the relative of one of the potential victims on their team? She should have been removed the moment the connection was made, no matter how good her track record was. But they stubbornly kept her on.

I can accept sticking to the tried and true, but when it’s obvious something needs to be done, and you don’t do it, you cross the line from stubbornness to stupidity.

Third—and this is the biggie to me—the killer uses hypnosis to control the victims, to the point where they actually have a hand in their demise. I have to call foul on this one. You can do a lot of things with hypnosis, but you cannot make someone do something contrary to their nature. If you’re a natural exhibitionist, maybe you could be hypnotized to walk down your town’s Main Street naked, but for us shyer types, uh-uh, no go. If you have no desire to smoke, you cannot be hypnotized to suddenly light one up. It won’t happen. This myth was debunked on TV by The Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters (episode “Voice Flame Extinguisher,” originally aired April 11, 2007) and of course, there are thousands of links on the Internet that support this.

The desire for self preservation is one of the strongest instincts we humans have and, knowing all this, I don’t buy the killer’s method actually working. The Motive and Means are top-notch and well plotted, but the Method fails.

I give this story THREE AND A HALF STARS.

Tripwire

Tripwire by Lee Child

After spending 13 years in the military police, Jack Reacher is perfectly content to dig swimming pools by day and bounce at a Key West strip club by night. A man named Costello comes looking for him but is found dead the next day. Tracking Costello's employer takes Reacher to upstate New York and Jodie Garber Jacobs, the daughter of Jack's old commanding officer, Leon Garber. His dying request was to meet with his protege. Why Leon needed to see Jack so desperately is a mystery, but an attempt to kill Reacher and Jodie clarifies the situation. People serious enough to commit a daylight double murder want Reacher and Jodie dead. The question is why? The motive lies in a $100 million Long Island land swindle, and Reacher's opposition is wealthy, ruthless, and as cunning as Reacher.

--Tripwire by Lee Child, Copyright ©1999 by Lee Child, published by Putnam Books

My Review

Book 3 in the Jack Reacher series finds our hero living in Key West. He’s been there for three months, a record for him ever since the Army cut him loose. During the day he’s digging pools by hand, and at night, he works as a bouncer in a strip club. He hadn’t planned on staying that long, but something about the transient lifestyle of the area appealed to him, and so he stayed, waiting for that “itch” that tells him it’s time to move on. That “itch” comes in the form of a New York detective named Costello. His client, Mrs. Jacob, is looking for him. Reacher doesn’t know a Mrs. Jacob, tells Costello he’s not Jack Reacher and Costello moves on. Later that night, two more New York men show up at the strip club, also looking for Reacher. After dispatching them, and later finding Costello’s dead body, Reacher decides that maybe now would be a good time to move on. His destination? New York City and the mysterious Mrs. Jacob.

Once in New York, he tracks down Costello’s office and find a number for Mrs. Jacob. Her secretary gives him her address and tells him to hurry or he’ll be late. Late for what, Reacher wonders, but rather than ask, goes to the suburban address. There, he finds he’s crashing a funeral reception. The deceased is none other than General Leon Garber, Reacher’s former boss (who made an appearance in Die Trying) and mentor in the Army. And Mrs. Jacob is Garber’s daughter, Jodie, whom he remembers fondly as a skinny teenager from 15 years ago. She’s not a skinny teenager anymore. She’s a lawyer in a New York City firm with a growing reputation of brokering deals between failing companies and their creditors. Reacher’s impressed with her success, however, he finds himself thinking thoughts that he shouldn’t be thinking about the daughter of a man he admired and respected.

After everyone else has left the reception, Reacher finds himself alone with Jodie. The reason she was looking for him, she explains, is not because Leon was ill and dying, but because he had gotten involved with something and, since he was dying, he wanted to pass the task on to Reacher. But Jodie doesn’t have any details, hoping she’d be able to find Reacher in time for her father to pass the task on himself.

It’s a good thing Reacher managed to track Jodie down when he did, as the two goons he ejected from the Key West strip club have decided to pay Jodie a visit. He gets Jodie to safety, they find out who had given Garber his task, and the hunt is on.

Mr. and Mrs. Hobie lost their only son, Victor, in Vietnam. But the Army never officially declared him dead. Thirty years later, he’s still considered MIA. They simply want to know the truth about their son…thirty years is a long time to hold on to hope. Garber agreed to help and started the ball rolling. Now Reacher needs to pick it up and see where it takes him.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Chester Stone, the third generation owner of a family business, is in trouble. He needs $1.1 million dollars to cover operating costs for the next six weeks, but the money isn’t there. He and his CFO juggle and recalculate, but it’s like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Finally, the CFO says he knows about a guy who makes loans to businesses in their sort of situation. Stone makes the appointment and the next day pays a visit to “Hook” Hobie, so named because instead of a prosthetic right hand, he sports a lethal-looking silver hook. Hobie agrees to lend him the money, in exchange for an equity position in the company and 6% interest for the six weeks. Stone agrees, the deal is signed, and the money transferred. Stone breathes a sigh of relief, believing his worries are over.

But they’re only beginning. Hobie puts his newly acquired stock on the market, sinking the value of the company in an instant. Now Stone owes $17 million and has no way to repay. But Hobie has a payment plan. He wants everything. Every Thing Stone owns down to the very clothes on his back. Oh, and a sweet piece of property on the beaches of Long Island Sound. All Hobie needs to do is demonstrate to Stone in no uncertain terms that he holds all the power. He’ll have it all. All he needs is Stone’s signature. And that of a certain female New York City lawyer with a reputation of brokering such deals.

Little does “Hook” Hobie know that Reacher and Jodie are looking for him, too. And Reacher always finds what he’s looking for.

There are some minor unanswered questions, such as what happened to Stone and his wife (I didn’t mention the part she plays in the story, but she is important) at the end. I suppose it’s logical to assume they picked up the pieces, repaired or dissolved the company, and got on with their lives. There’s also the question of the exact nature of Hobie’s relationship with one of his assistants, Tony. I don’t think they had a “relationship” (wink wink nudge nudge), but Tony obviously knows the truth about Hobie and cares a great deal for the man, much more than a superior/assistant business relationship. But the origin of that relationship is unknown and leaves me wondering.

But anyway, I am so loving this series! Jack Reacher is my new hero. You can have The Dark Knight, the kids from Heroes and any other pop culture hero out there (okay, the kids from Heroes are a bit passé, but you get my point). I’ll take Jack Reacher. Oh, and Lee Child. This guy really knows how to create a deeply layered psychological thriller. I was going to take a break from this series after the first two or three books, but now I’m itching to get started on Book 4, Running Blind.

I give this story FOUR STARS.

Die Trying

Die Trying by Lee Child

Jack Reacher is in both the wrong and the right place at the same time when FBI Special Agent and daughter of the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Holly Johnson is abducted from a Chicago street. It is the wrong place because Reacher, a former army major drifting around the country, is kidnapped as well. It is the right place because only he has the instincts to foil the complex, deadly plan of the kidnappers, a Montana militia group headed by a charismatic, brilliant, but psychotic leader.

--Die Trying by Lee Child, Copyright ©1998 by Lee Child, published by Jove Books

My Review

Die Trying is the 2nd book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. It’s the end of June, less than a week before Independence Day, and Jack Reacher is strolling down the city streets of Chicago. He bumps into a young woman coming out of a dry cleaners, balancing an armful of clothing in one hand and a crutch with the other. As he helps her regain her balance, two armed men appear and force them into a car. They’re driven to another location, handcuffed together, and tossed into the back of a van. As the minutes stretch into hours, Jack and his companion, who introduces herself as FBI Agent Holly Johnson, get to know each other.

Meanwhile, in the almost-abandoned mining town of York, Montana, Beau Borkin and his militia followers have taken up residence. A special room has been constructed for their prisoner in the town’s courthouse building. But when the van returns, minus one of the kidnap team and with an additional prisoner, Borkin adjusts his plans and decides on a way to use his additional prisoner.

Back in Chicago, Holly’s co-workers have retraced her steps and have the surveillance footage from the dry cleaners. The two gunmen and the car’s driver are easily identified as compatriots of Beau Borkin, but the fourth man, the tall one holding Holly’s arm, is harder to I.D. Eventually, they get one from the military—Major Jack Reacher, highly decorated, former military police investigator, released from the Army a year earlier.

Jack Reacher and the other kidnappers are now their number one priority. But there’s a traitor on the FBI team, someone who is feeding information to Borkin and his militia. Borkin is determined to declare York County, Montana as a new country, free from the tyranny of the United States, and he’s going to declare his country’s independence on July 4th. Can Jack and Holly find a way to stop Borkin and his people before they stage their own explosive July 4 fireworks?

I give this story FOUR STARS.

Killing Floor

Killing Floor by Lee Child
A Jack Reacher novel, Book #1

Welcome to Margrave, Georgia--but don't get too attached to the townsfolk, who are either in on a giant conspiracy, or hurtling toward violent deaths, or both. There's not much of a welcome for Jack Reacher, a casualty of the Army's peace dividend, who's drifted into town idly looking for traces of a long-dead black jazzman. Not only do the local cops arrest him for murder, but the chief of police turns eyewitness to place him on the scene, even though Reacher was getting on a bus in Tampa at the time. Two surprises follow: The murdered man wasn't the only victim, and he was Reacher's brother Joe, whom he hadn't seen in seven years. So Reacher, who so far hasn't had anything personally against the crooks who set him up for a weekend in the state pen at Warburton, clicks into overdrive. Banking on the help of the only two people in Margrave he can trust--a Harvard-educated chief of detectives who hasn't been on the job long enough to be on the take, and a smart, scrappy officer who's taken him to her bed--he sets out methodically in his brother's footsteps, trying to figure out why his cellmate in Warburton, a panicky banker whose cell-phone number turned up in Joe's shoe, confessed to a murder he obviously didn't commit; trying to figure out why all the out-of- towners on Joe's list of recent contacts were as dead as he was; and trying to stop the local carnage, or at least direct it in more positive ways. Kirkus Reviews, copied from Amazon.com.

--Killing Floor by Lee Child, Copyright ©1997 by Lee Child, published by Jove Books, reprinted April 2006

My Review

Gee, I don’t know what more I can add to the above! But let’s see what I can do.

Jack Reacher is a man disconnected from society. After thirteen years in the Army—and an entire childhood as an always-traveling Army brat—he’s been “riffed” from the only life he’d ever known. Now he’s finding peace in drifting through the country, stopping whenever the whim strikes and picking back up again whenever he feels like. On his way from Tampa northward, he makes an impulsive stop at Margrave, Georgia. It’s an impulse he regrets when, halfway through breakfast at a diner, he’s arrested for murder.

Jack makes it clear that once his alibi is verified and the charges are dropped, he’s leaving Margrave. Gone. History. You won’t see him except for the dust trail he’ll leave behind. He’ll walk to Atlanta if he has to, whatever it takes to get away from this weird little Southern town. Until he finds out the man he’s accused of murdering is his brother Joe. Now Jack’s staying, and with the help of Margrave’s Harvard-educated-formerly-of-Boston detective and the attractive cop who happily lets him into her bed, he’s going to find out exactly what Joe was doing in Margrave and why it got him killed.

Hmpf…I think I like Kirkus’s review better than mine…

This is Lee Child’s first “Jack Reacher” novel, originally published in 1997. It is an intricately woven story, with threads and tendrils dangling here and there and only someone with the skill and training of a master weaver (or an Army trained killer and investigator) can tie them all together. Jack Reacher is that man, and if you like well-thought-out well-planned thrillers, you’ll enjoy this book.

I give this story FOUR STARS.

My plan this year is to listen to all of the books in the Jack Reacher series except One Shot which I read last year. Reacher is a great character and I hope to enjoy him more and more as the year progresses.