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Fiction. Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • THE BLOCKBUSTER JACK REACHER SERIES THAT INSPIRED TWO MAJOR MOTION PICTURES AND THE STREAMING SERIES REACHER “Reacher gets better and better. . . . [This is the] craftiest and most highly evolved of Lee Child’s electrifying Reacher books.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times A bus crashes in a savage snowstorm and lands Jack Reacher in the middle of a deadly confrontation. In nearby Bolton, South Dakota, one brave woman is standing up for justice in a small town threatened by sinister forces. If she’s going to live long enough to testify, she’ll need help. Because a killer is coming to Bolton, a coldly proficient assassin who never misses. Reacher’s original plan was to keep on moving. But the next 61 hours will change everything. The secrets are deadlier and his enemies are stronger than he could have guessed—but so is the woman he’ll risk his life to save.… (more)
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In both novels, Reacher is helping an overwhelmed police department in a small town. In "Killing Floor,"
Both stories have only two members of the police department helping Reacher. In "Killing Floor," it is Capt. Finley, second in command, and Officer Roscoe. In "61 Hours," his allies are Chief Holland and Andrew Peterson, second in command.
In both stories, Reacher has to call the Washington, D.C. area for background information and help. In the first novel, he calls his brother's division of the Treasury Department, in the current novel, he calls the Commanding Officer of an elite military group in Rock Creek, Va., a group that Reacher had once commanded.
In both novels, a deadline plays a prominent role in the story. In "Killing Floor," the situation must be resolved before the following Sunday when the Coast Guard will change its surveillance procedure. In "61 Hours," the title itself, gives a time when an event will happen that Reacher has to stop.
In "Killing Floor," Reacher is saving the family of Paul Hubble. In the current novel, there is a witness to a drug deal, Janet Salter, a retired librarian. She is willing to testify and it would put an important person in the drug gang behind bars. Reacher must help protect her so the drug dealers don't try to kill her before she can testify.
The towns in both novels have gained by an outside source that is partially the reason for the problem. In "Killing Floor," a wealthy corporate owner bought a piece of property and established his facility in the town. He gives weekly payments to the town merchants and they look the other way when he or his workmen don't obey the law. In "61 Hours," a prison is built on town land. The town was in competition for the land and had to make certain promises to get the deal.
I enjoyed both novels and always enjoy reading about the adventures and attributes of Jack Reacher. I feel that "Killing Floor," was much more superior for its uniqueness.
Whatever the case, Lee Child is one of the best story tellers and thriller writers in literature.
In recent years, Reacher’s adventures have gotten a bit less compelling, seemed a bit too similar to one another, and sometimes fell over the edge into nihilistic violence that were just a bit too much for my taste. This devolution seemed complete in Gone Tomorrow, in which Child seemed to have been bitten by the “bestseller bug” that afflicts so many ultra-successful thriller writers: short chapters (usually three to five pages long) with short paragraphs, plenty of sentence fragments as stand-alone paragraphs to build tension, and a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter. It makes for a quick read, true, and Gone Tomorrow was definitely decorating the bestseller lists when it came out a little more than a year ago, but it’s the junk food of the literature banquet. If Child started out giving us the gourmet version of a thriller, now he was writing the equivalent of a fast-food burger.
Gone Tomorrow starts when Reacher is riding a subway car in Manhattan and sees a woman who shows all the signs of being a suicide bomber. From there, it lurches into an investigation of terrorism in which Child is taken into the confidence of several different law enforcement agencies and tasked with averting an enormous threat to the United States almost single-handedly. Reacher promises to get the job done, no matter what it takes.
Gone Tomorrow improves as it goes along, but the whole novel feels like Child has reached the limits of what he can do with Reacher. He’s an excellent character with an interesting background, and his military knowledge never fails to add great color to strongly plotted books, but based on the evidence of Gone Tomorrow, I would say that it’s time for him to go into retirement.
Perhaps that’s why I broke my habit of years and did not purchase a signed copy of the 2010 Reacher novel, but instead got on the waiting list at the library for my shot at it. I may reverse that decision, because 61 Hours is a fine book, a return to form for Child – maybe even as good as some of the earliest in the series. It is so good for many reasons, including its unexpected and unresolved ending; Reacher’s failure to have no-strings-attached sex with the nearest available female; and Reacher’s seeming cluelessness this time around, as opposed to his usual secret inside knowledge that allows him and him alone to solve the mystery. Certainly it’s not the fairly lame device of counting down from 61 hours until the climax.
The story is set in South Dakota in the middle of the winter. I’ve been in South Dakota at that time of year, and I assure you that the cold there is nothing to mess with. Reacher, who usually manages to get himself to southern climes during the winter months, is completely unprepared for the arctic air and the far below zero windchills. The weather plays an important role in this book, and it’s actually nice to see that Reacher struggles with it, a lot. He’s also in a place where his lack of wheels is a serious problem; he can’t always get to where he’s needed in the blink of an eye, and he can’t take care of everything with a single well-placed punch. It’s refreshing to see that Reacher is human after all.
Reacher winds up in South Dakota because a bus he’s on crashes in the middle of a blizzard, and he has no way to move on until a replacement bus gets there – which won’t be for several days. All of the motels and hotels in town are at capacity because it’s visiting day at the new federal prison, so the passengers have to be fobbed off on town residents. All of the passengers are clearly harmless, elderly people on a group trip to see Mount Rushmore at a time of year when no one else wants to go, which is why they can afford it. Reacher is the anomaly, someone who saw a half-empty bus and made a private deal with the driver for a trip west. No one really wants to put up this rather suspicious character except for the Assistant Chief of Police, Andrew Peterson.
Not surprisingly for a Child thriller, Reacher gets involved in the murder case Peterson is investigating. As the bigger plot is revealed, Reacher uses his remaining military connections to figure out exactly what’s going on at that abandoned Air Force site just outside town where a bunch of bikers are dealing methamphetamine. Even more, Reacher becomes integral to the protection of a federal witness to a meth sales transaction.
What I found most notable about this book, though, is that Child has returned to a strong style and method of storytelling. Perhaps he has been reading Robert B. Parker’s Spenser mysteries, because he tells a good portion of his story through dialogue, a technique Parker honed to perfection. Advancing a plot substantially through dialogue is much harder than you might imagine, but Child does it well, in much crisper fashion than his previous books. Chapters and paragraphs have heft here, and the “instant bestseller” format of Gone Tomorrow is – well, gone today. 61 Hours is a much better book.
61 Hours ends in a cliffhanger, with the promise of a new novel coming out October 19, 2010. That’s a much shorter gap between thrillers for Child than usual, which makes me all the more curious about what October will bring. I’m glad I didn’t give up on Child after Gone Tomorrow, and I’m glad there will be a new thriller from Child’s pen in a mere three months.
A Reacher story requires two elements (what I like to call 'Reacher Being Reacher'): (1) he needs to kick some proverbial ass every so often; and (2) he needs to talk his way through solving the mysteries and puzzles that confront him. If either of these is lacking, then the reader isn't gettng the full experience. Unfortunately, while #2 was very much in evidence, there wasn't enough of #1 until very late in the story (which has been a problem in a few of the more recent Reacher books). Oh, well. Nevertheless, the story was still entertaining.
This was also the first Reacher book in a long time where we've really seen some growth in the character, maybe even some change in direction. It will be interesting to see where Child takes that.
I will note that Child both surprised me and didn't surprise me. He did a few things that I didn't think he would. Bravo. But I was also able fairly early on to narrow down who the hidden antogonist was. That was a bit of a bummer. Of course the final surprise (on the book's last page) was pretty good.
61 Hours by Lee Child is another Jack Reacher novel, and like previous books in the series it's about Jack taking on the seemingly impossible odds and surviving and
This time Jack's in South Dakota, freezing in the middle of a snowstorm. He ended up hitching a ride on a bus full of senior citizens who were on a tour. When the bus crashes due to bad weather, he finds himself in Bolton, SD. Which is the location for a newly built prison and the apparent headquarters for a gang of meth dealers. And this is where the story gets a little complicated. One of the meth dealers is in prison, and the key witness is under police protection. The deputy chief of police seems to be the only one that trusts Jack, and he asks Jack to help keep the witness safe. One thing that bugged me was the police chief, and how wimpy he seemed, but that is kind of explained a little later in the book.
The title of the book comes from the fact that as the book opens you have a countdown so you know approximately how long it takes for Jack to do the things he does and the events to take place.
One thing I really liked was the way that we learned more about Jack's Army background, and his personal history than we have in the previous books. As "usual" he connects with some of the people of the town quite a bit, especially the witness. He even seems to start a relationship, over the phone with the woman who now has his old position in the military, but we'll have to see if it continues. As usual, he is able to see things and reach conclusions that the local police can't/don't. One of the one characters makes a comment something like he's (meaning Jack) is the sort of guy who sees things seconds ahead of the rest of the world, and it's true. Jack's reflexes and skills are put to the test in this one.
While this is a stand alone book it doesn't exactly end here. It ends with a cliff hanger and a few pages later you see the notice - "Want To Know What Happens Next? Look for Lee Child's next new thriller - coming 10-19-2010. And that cliff hanger is a real OH MY WORD moment. ::grin:: I've already listed the book (title unknown) down on my calendar so I can be sure to get it.
Jack Reacher is hitching a ride on a tourist bus when it crashes in a snow storm in South Dakota. Forced to wait out the storm in a nearby small town he soon discovers that this is not your ordinary quiet little town. A
Jack Reacher is the kind of guy you want to have around when trouble is brewing. He sees things the local police don’t pick up, his army experience and connections give him an advantage and at times his knowledge seems too good to be true. And that’s what I liked about him, he gets things done whatever it takes.
I enjoyed this book. The writing was crisp and clean, the dialog snappy and the story line easy to follow. The suspense builds as the plot unfolds. It’s one of those books that make you stay up too late because you want to know what is going to happen next.
This is the 14th novel in the Reacher series but it is the first one I have read. While having read previous novels would probably have helped me understand Reacher a little better, it wasn’t necessary for me to enjoy this book. You can read the books in any order. The author provided enough background detail for me to easily follow along. That said, I now want to read the rest of them if they are as good as this one.
One additional point to mention: Although I would consider this a stand alone story there are several unanswered questions at the end of this novel that presumably will be continued in the next book, Worth Dying For, which will be published later this year.
This time though things are different. I mean some things are the same. He has a real mean bad dude named Plato to deal with. Plato is mean. He is also only 4' 11" tall. One 6' guy called him a midget. That dummy woke up in a hospital downsized to 4' 10". Yeah, who's a midget now, midget?
But this book is different. It is set in South Dakota in the winter in 30 degrees below zero weather. Not only that Reacher isn't walking he bummed a ride on a tour bus. Uh, a tour bus full of old people? Oh Jack, what are you doing? Then the tour bus crashes and Jack finds himself stuck in this small town for several days, about 61 hours. He has to protect people and go after bad guys but its like he's different. The cold bothers him, he even shivers. He gets all moony with a lady who has his old MP job back east. Jack Reacher has turned into a weenie. I mean even I have been in minus 30 degree weather. Big deal.
I don't like this new Jack Reacher one bit. This is supposed to be brain candy for guys, not moping self reflection. I attribute the change in Jack to his wearing panties with too much rayon in them. Somebody told me that too much rayon in cold weather is bad for guys wearing panties. It binds them up too tight or something. I don't know.
Whatever the cause is I didn't much care for this Jack Reacher. No taunts or wise cracks or anything. He doesn't say one witty thing in the whole novel. I give this novel about 2.5 stars out of 4. Its OK but not up to par.
Come on Lee Child, Jack Reacher needs to man up!
There are times when I fantasize about having Jack Reacher's life - no fixed address, no real possessions, just wandering about the country from adventure to adventure. Then I remember that he never seems to have a book (a problem for me) and that he's always getting into hairy scenarios involving grievous bodily harm and I decide it's okay to just wait for the next book. Sometimes living vicariously is preferable.
While others seemed to have found that the countdown added to the suspense of the novel, I wish that it had only been used with the folks that knew about the deadline, not at the end of every chapter. I found it distracting when it was at the end of a chapter from the Reacher perspective causing me to wonder if he perhaps knew more than I thought he might. No spoilers here, though!
As in most Child novels, there is seldom much of a challenge in identifying the perp --- the suspense lies in Reacher identifying the perp and what occurs before he has that knowledge. I particularly liked not liking the villains in this story. What a disgusting little man.
I'm particularly grateful for the "Stop You're Killing Me" website so that I can track the publication of the next Lee Child novel (October 19).
This was the first book that I have read from the Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” series. I was concerned about it being the 14th in the series but I was hooked early. This book is able to stand on its own, all the back story is given to the reader as needed.
It opens with a bus load of retirees and Reacher being stranded by a snowstorm in a small South Dakota town. Mix in a abandoned military installation, motorcycle gangs, prison unrest, a drug lord and a few other mysterious or unsavory characters and you have a delightful blend of murder, mayhem and action. It was a fun read and has inspired me to add the rest of the series to my “To Read” list.