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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 �High-powered, intricately wrought suspense.��Janet Maslin, The New York Times 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, the fifth passenger, had a big secret, and her plain little life was being watched in Washington, and California, and Afghanistan�by dozens of people with one thing in common: They�re all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or just enough to get him killed. A race has begun through the streets of Manhattan, a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. For Jack Reacher, a man who trusts no one and likes it that way, the finish line comes when you finally get face-to-face and look your worst enemy in the eye. �Propulsive . . . [Child is] an expert at ratcheting up tension.��Los Angeles Times �Hold on tight. . . . This novel will give you whiplash as you rabidly turn pages. . . . May be [Lee Child�s] best.��USA Today.… (more)
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Child's Jack Reacher is a drifter, retired army, who moves about the country with the clothes on his back and a clip-together toothbrush in his pocket; each novel begins with Reacher either coming into or just fixing to leave a town. Jack Reacher is often wrong but always sure of himself. He's adaptable, flexible, quick to come up with a theory or a plan and equally quick to change direction when he's on the wrong track. Reacher is tall and good looking, in a way that is attractive to women and non-threatening to men. He doesn't enjoy killing, but when he has to he does it efficiently and with a minimum of remorse. Jack Reacher is a bad-ass.
Gone Tomorrow, set in New York, opens with a thrilling, heart-stoppingly tense middle-of-the-night subway ride; the tension set in motion by the events on the train will not be relieved until the end of the book. Reacher--who did some of his military service in the Middle East--while taking stock of his fellow late night subway riders notices that one of them, a young American woman, is exhibiting all of the classic tells of a suicide bomber. After running carefully through the list in his head to make sure, he approaches her to attempt to talk her down. As it turns out, however, it is not a bomb she is cradling protectively inside the bag on her lap, but a gun, which she takes out and uses to fatally shoot herself.
Why? The young woman, Susan Marks, is a low-level clerk in the Pentagon Human Resources department, with no real access to important information of any kind. So why is a group of Feds so secret they don't carry badges or i.d. interested in her? And why are the Russians, or Ukrainians, or maybe Afghanis, interested? How is a U.S. Senator with presidential aspirations involved?
The plot is satisfyingly convoluted, involving top secret Delta Force activity in Afghanistan in the 80s, cover-ups in the 90s and beyond, and some nasty, nasty terrorists. Jack Reacher, stud that he is, will be shot up--twice--with a tranquilizer dart, and still get the best of his captors. The police will be against him, then with him, then against him…and when the end comes, the carnage is epic and the revealed secrets both more and less than expected.
Gone Tomorrow is Lee Child at the top of his game, thirteen volumes into the series.
For thirteen years Jack Reacher was a military policeman in the US Army, saw service all over the world, and finally reached the rank of Major. He was highly decorated but that didn't help when the army downsized. He's never lost his ability to put two and two together, and so in the police interviews that follow the subway incident, he smells a rat or two, especially when the interviewers ask him about a name he recognises. John Sansom is an Army veteran, and a highly decorated hero, aiming at election as a Senator, but Jack can't work out what he got his decorations for. It's a puzzle Jack wants to solve.
There is something uncomfortable and patriotically close to the bone about the central theme of this novel. I feel that Lee Child wears his political beliefs on his sleeve, and is writing for an audience only too sensitive about suicide bombers and the aftermath of 9/11.
Reacher talking about a photo he sees in a book that Sansom has written:
That photograph that was different was a news picture I had seen before. It was of an American politician called Donald Rumsfeld, in Baghdad, shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, back in 1983. Donlad Rumsfeld had twice been Secretary of Defense, but at the time had been a special presidential envoy for Ronald Reagan. He had gone to Baghdad to kiss Saddam's ass and pat him on the back and hive him a pair of solid gold spurs as a gift and a symbol of America's everlasting gratitude. Eight years later we had been kicking Saddam's ass, not kissing it. Fifteen years after that, we killed him. Sansom had captioned the picture Sometimes our friends become our enemies, and sometimes our enemies become our friends.
GONE TOMORROW is a thriller, a mystery, and at times the violence feels very raw. The plot becomes extremely complex and it feels at times as if there is a lot of technical detail particular GONE TOMORROW is #13 in the Jack Reacher series, but I don't think you need worry if you have never read any before. GONE TOMORROW will work well as a stand-alone.
This
Jack Reacher is a retired U.S. Army military policeman from the
In this book, Reacher witnesses the suicide of a woman on a subway train, and decides that it is his job to get to the bottom of who she was and why she did it. It turns out to be a very complicated matter of national security. What a remarkable coincidence that Jack Reacher was on the scene! In the end, it is Reacher alone against a terrorist cell of 22 people, but I won’t spoil it for you by telling you which side wins! (LOL)
Discussion: You may ask, if Jack Reacher is so hot to eliminate bad people, why didn’t he just stay with the military police? The answer is authority: he doesn’t want to answer to it. And responsibility and permanence are anathema to him also. (In one humorous passage, he muses that, when he was twenty-two, “a four-day relationship would have seemed long to me. Practically like engagement, or marriage.” Older now, his tolerance level seems even lower!)
All of these aspects of Reacher can be annoying, but it is his “superhuman” abilities that put him towards the cartoon end of the character spectrum. On the other hand, if Child suggested that Reacher had Asperger’s Syndrome, Jack’s odd combination of quantitative skills and social aversion might seem more plausible.
Evaluation: After a number of Jack Reacher books, I just want to grab Jack by the shirt and say “Get a job! Start a blog or something! Use deodorant!” But I seem to be the only woman who wants to grab his shirt for any other reason than to pull it off and jump in the sack with him…
The dénouement of Gone Tomorrow has a revealing exchange between Svetlana Hoth, the novel’s ‘baddie’, and Jack Reacher, whom she has forced at gun-point to strip to his boxers:
Svetlana “made a mound of my possessions on the kitchen counter next to the nine loose rounds and the roll of tape. My cash, plus a few coins. My old expired passport. My ATM card. My subway card. … And my clip-together toothbrush.
‘Not much,‘ Svetlana said.
‘Everything I need,’ I said. ‘Nothing I don’t.’
‘You’re a poor man.’
‘No, I’m a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.’
‘The American dream, then. To die rich.’ “(p. 424)
Reacher refuses to live the American dream, but is prepared to die to protect it. More precisely, he uses extreme violence to protect it.
This moral ambiguity hung over the book as I read it. No doubt it’s beautifully written. The plot is wonderful. The opening scene in a claustrophobic subway car is full of menace and fear. The pages turn and draw the reader on as Jack Reacher takes on 19 baddies and kills them all. The violence is gory – but not overly so.
Reacher presents himself as a necessary evil in post 9/11 America. He is a patriot whose skills in death give him the right to identify and eliminate those who need eliminating for the protection of the rest. As a character, he is incredibly self-aware and makes no claim to be a hero, just a product of his training to be Military Police in the special forces. He is chilling, compelling, and ultimately leaves a bad taste.
At one level, I recommend Gone Tomorrow as a brilliantly crafted thriller. Does Lee Child, however, actually create irony across the book, sucking us in to enjoy the story, and then raising dilemmas about effective responses to terrorism? Or is it really just an airport novel with doubtful morals?
Lee Child delivers another winner in his thirteenth Jack Reacher novel. Though more cerebral and less action-oriented than some of Child's previous books, Gone Tomorrow gives Reacher fans everything they've come
Jack Reacher is sitting in a mostly empty subway car in New York City in the middle of the night when he realizes that one of his few fellow passengers is exhibiting all twelve characteristic signs of a suicide bomber. He approaches her, she reacts, and just like that, Reacher is thr own into the middle of another unlikely but oh-so-entertaining series of challenges and solutions, this time pitting him against the NYPD, the FBI, and an Afghanistan-based terrorist organization.
For pure escapist fiction, you can't do much better than Lee Child and Jack Reacher. In this book, Reacher plays the role of investigator, working at odds with the authorities to solve a mystery with roots going back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Along the way, he not only exhibits deduction abilities that would make Sherlock Holmes envious, he manages to escape federal custody, track down and apprehend bad guys in a city of over 8 million people, and first threaten and then team up with a United States senator.
Though far-fetched at times, the plot is exciting, and Jack Reacher is at his investigative best. Readers familiar with Child's books won't find anything unexpected; there's violence and some language and one sex scene (unnecessary but not unexpected--Reacher always gets the girl). One description of torture is gruesome enough to make even the protagonist a little queasy.
For pure escapist entertainment, thriller fans can't do much better than Lee Child. Gone Tomorrow will certainly please his regulars and may well generate new readers. An interesting additional element is a short-story prequel published in the New York Times and accessible through the author's Web site.
After giving his statement to the police,
Outside the train station, Reacher is approached by three men who ask if the woman in the train gave him anything or mentioned John Swanson or Lila Holt. She didn't but the names give Reacher something to investigate.
Swanson is a congressman. He's written a book about his life and Reacher learns that he was a Delta Force member. He recieved medals for his missions but no details are mentioned.
Jack goes to Washington, DC and speaks to Swanson but doesn't learn anything. Back in New York, he meets Lila who states that she's here with her mother. Susan Mark was helping them find a soldier who had been a friend of her mother's in Berlin.
The well written plot sails along and we learn of Reacher's inseights about Lila and her mother. Although they seemed sympathetic, there were holes in their story. They wanted info that would embarass the Congressman or even the United States.
Reacher agrees to help the Congressman. He must find a memory stick that Susan stole from the Pentagon. He knows something about what is on that sick but doesn't know precisely why it is so important.
Child's last novel, "Nothing to Lose" wasn't up to his prior writing excellence. However, with "Gone Tomorrow" he is back at the pinnicle of action thrillers.
Reacher is again the heroic, knowledgeable character. Seeing the manner in which he understands his advesaries adds to his legend and makes him more interesting. The setting is in New York and Child describes the city and inhabitants extremely well.
It was obvious that Lee Child thoroughly researches his locales in a
Lots of interesting background to Manhattan and the subway system. I liked the way that the suspense is kept up, with the usual villains and gun battles being par for the course. If you are a Lee Child fan, then I think you'll enjoy this one and you'll gain an insight into New York that the tourist brochures don't touch on.
Jack is in a New Yorkk subway late at night when he spots a women who seems to fit the standard criteria for a suicide bomber. He approaches her (go Jack) but she shoots herself and proves not to have any
It does however have many of the same faults that have begun to creep into the preceeding stories. The women are all instantly attracted to Jack without any real personnel interaction. Law enforcement is overly welcoming and helpful without any reason to be so, and many reasons in his now chequred past to be suspicious. The enemies don't really make much sense, I'm still not sure why exactly they were in the US, much less at that time and place.
However Jack's still the same idealistic fit and determined person he's always been - even if some of the challenges of modern life are catching up with him. It will be interesting to note whether Lee Child manages to age him appropriately or whether he'll become another James Bond, still beating all comers when over 50.
Readable, certainly worthwhile picking up if you're a JR fan, but his best books were a few away.
Jack Reacher is
Anyway, here's Jack sitting on the 6 train heading uptown in the early early morning. Five people are on the train car with him and one is probably a terrorist. He then proceeds to break down the signs of what a terrorist looks and acts like. And she (it's a she) fits the bill to a T.
And that's what hooked me. It was really fascinating. And what kept me interested in the story was Jack's continuous snarky observations of New York and its people. Sometimes they cracked me up and usually I was like "YES!" that is totally what it's like. For instance, as he's scrambling to get away from (or follow someone, I forget), he gets bogged down by one of NYC's many Double Wide baby strollers for twins, triplets, etc. And I was like "YES! Have you ever been to the Upper West on a Saturday morning?!" And apparently he has.
So it was a good action book with a odd snarky lead character and it was fun. And he made fun of tidbits of NYC life which made me laugh.
This is the first Reacher novel I listened to – I picked it up mainly because the premise sounded interesting – and I don't think it matters that it was the thirteenth in the series (but I'm glad to know there's more Jack Reacher fare out there).
I am partial to novels by Len Deighton books and by Nelson DeMille. I found points of similarity between Mr. Child's work and works by both these authors. Mr. Child and Mr. DeMille both write well about a sort of person one meets in a real military career - the better sort of professional, the sort one hopes is often to be found. Mr. Child also makes you stop and rethink what you thought you saw earlier, as Len Deighton so often did. There are things to think about, it's not simply all action and mayhem. At t he same time, the pace of the narrative and the (shall we say) results-oriented approach taken by his Jack Reacher character reminded me of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. This guy is not Hamlet. Those who like Mr. Deighton or Mr. DeMille might find this book to their taste, too.
Some authors fake it, and some do their homework and get things right. Lee Child is in the second group. In this book there is a rather deftly constructed bit of plot based on US Army regulations concerning awards. I'm fussy about details; I looked up his AR citation and he has the AR number just right and the reference within it is real. That gave me much more confidence in the plausibility of other parts that I couldn't so easily check.
If you like action books, I think you'll like this one.
This whole series is built
I always manage to learn some odd bit of trivia I didn't know before from these books. This time is was a bit about the British in Afghanistan that I never put together until now.
Great plotting, superb action, big fun.
Thirteenth in the Jack Reacher series. An entertaining,
Likewise, you may assume from formula that
If you like the loner-hero type of series, try Reacher. Recommended.