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Posts Tagged ‘Lee Child’

61 Hours: A Reacher Novel

01 Oct

Lee Child on 61 Hours

Every book starts with a grab-bag of ideas. I sat down to write 61 Hours with six things on my mind. First was the title…it just popped into my head and stayed there (and I knew I wanted the 61 to be written in figures, not words, so if you’re the kind of reader who arranges your shelves alphabetically–I apologize!)

Second, I knew it would once again feature Jack Reacher…over the last 13 books he’s built up such enthusiasm and loyalty among readers I knew I’d be crazy not to keep on reporting his adventures.

Thirdly, I knew I wanted very, very cold weather. My fifth book, Echo Burning, was set in the west of Texas in a heat wave, and the extreme temperature was seen as a real character in the story, so I wanted to try the same thing again, but this time at the opposite end of the thermometer. I was a little nervous at first, because one of my early writer heroes was Alistair MacLean, who wrote cold weather so well. But most of his cold stories were set up on the polar ice cap, or above the Arctic Circle, and I knew Reacher would have no reason to go there. In the end I chose South Dakota in the depths of winter as a location, and I’ll know I’ve succeeded if you shiver over every page.

Fourth, fifth, and sixth, I had three names to work with–winners of your-name-as-a-character charity auction lots. A gentleman named Mark Salter helped out with autism research and asked for his mother’s name to be in the book–Mrs. Janet Salter; and then for two separate literacy projects, a man named Andrew Peterson won an auction, and the man who won the other wanted his wife’s name included–Susan Turner. All three winners made very generous donations to the various charities, so I decided it was only fair to make all three into important, central characters.

The only problem was…Mr. Turner asked that the character named after his wife have a romantic entanglement with Reacher. Read 61 Hours to see if he got his wish!

61 Hours: A Reacher Novel (Reacher Series) is available at Amazon for $9.99. To order click here.

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Die Trying

12 Jul

Television writer Lee Child’s otherwise riveting first thriller, Killing Floor, was criticized by some reviewers because of an unconvincing coincidence at its center. Child addresses that problem in his second book–and thumbs his nose at those reviewers–by having his hero, ex-military policeman Jack Reacher, just happen to be walking by a Chicago dry cleaner when an attractive young FBI agent named Holly Johnson comes out carrying nine expensive outfits and a crutch to support her soccer-injured knee. As Holly stumbles, Reacher grabs her and her garments–which gets him kidnapped along with her by a trio of very determined badguys. “He had no problem with how he had gotten grabbed up in the first place,” Child writes. “Just a freak of chance had put him alongside Holly Johnson at the exact time the snatch was going down. He was comfortable with that. He understood freak chances. Life was built out of freak chances, however much people would like to pretend otherwise.” Lucky for Holly–whose father just happens to be an Army general and current head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thus making her a tempting target for a bunch of Montana-based extremists–Reacher still has all the skills and strengths associated with his former occupation. And Child still knows how to write scenes of violent action better than virtually anyone else around. –Dick Adler

Die Trying (Jack Reacher, No. 2) is available at Amazon for $9.99. To order click here.

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Without Fail

12 Jul

What better way to test the security surrounding a U.S. vice president-elect than to hire someone skilled in the killing arts to penetrate his protection? Assassination strategy, though, is only part of the assignment facing Jack Reacher in Without Fail. This restive, blunt-edged ex-military cop must also determine whether recent threats against VP-to-be Senator Brook Armstrong are legitimate or are primarily intended to embarrass the perfectionist head of Armstrong’s new Secret Service detail, M.E. Froelich, who happens to have been a girlfriend of Reacher’s late brother.

If Without Fail lacks the emotional urgency of Lee Child’s previous novel, Echo Burning, it still barely lets the reader catch a decent breath between plot crests. Jack and his fetching yet formidable colleague, Frances Neagley, must figure out how warning letters to Armstrong are being delivered into the Secret Service sanctum, whether the senator is at risk because of something political or personal, and who staged the demonstration murders of two innocent men also named Armstrong, first initial B. Unfortunately, a few twists (including the source of a thumbprint applied to the threats against Armstrong) can be figured out in advance, and the story is light on character development. A tiny breach in Reacher’s reclusive carapace opens as Froelich transfers the love she once felt for his brother toward him, and there are suggestions that Neagley may have depths of feeling just waiting to be plumbed. However, other players are mere ciphers–the sacrificial victims of an action-oriented yarn. –J. Kingston Pierce

Without Fail (Jack Reacher, No. 6) is available at Amazon for $9.99. To order click here.

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Echo Burning

12 Jul

Jack Reacher is Spenser before Robert Parker domesticated his Boston PI–in fact, Reacher’s even tougher than Hawk. He can inhale and exhale a few times and pump up his muscles so they make a bad character think twice about tangling with him. And he’s spent enough time on the right side of the law to know how to operate in the gray zone if that’s what it takes to save the fair maiden, punish the bad guys, and right any other wrongs he happens to encounter in the course of his wanderings. Echo Burning is vintage Lee Child, a smartly paced, intricately plotted, and masterfully characterized thriller starring Reacher, the ex-military cop who’s so concerned about commitment to anything–a woman, possessions, a permanent address–that he only owns the clothes on his back. But he’s the kind of justice-seeking guy you’d want on your side, especially if you were an abused wife trapped in a marriage you can’t get out of until, and unless, somebody bumps off your old man.

Reacher’s sympathetic, but he’s not crazy. Nonetheless, he allows himself to be drawn into beautiful Carmen Greer’s orbit, which ought to teach a guy not to hitchhike. Agreeing to protect her from the husband who’s about to be released from jail and, according to Carmen, who’s about to pay her back for tipping off the authorities to the tax fraud that landed him in prison, Reacher moves into the bunkhouse of the Echo, Texas, ranch that’s owned by the bigoted, bitter, but powerful Greer family, which despises Carmen because she’s Mexican and tolerates her only because she’s Sloop Greer’s wife and the mother of his child. The expected bloodshed ensues, but it’s Sloop, not Carmen, who ends up with a bullet in his head. Reacher’s convinced that Carmen acted in self-defense, even after other evidence comes to light that suggests there’s more–and less–to her unhappy tale than even her own lawyer believes. This is the best Jack Reacher yet, smart, stylish, and convincing. If it’s your first encounter with Child’s work, be sure to check out his backlist–Running Blind, Tripwire, etc. –Jane Adams

Echo Burning (Jack Reacher) is available at Amazon for $9.99. To order click here.

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