Gone Tomorrrow - Lee Child
AKA The Return of Jack Reacher, all 196cm, 250lbs of hardcore trained badness
The 13th Jack Reacher novel, Gone Tomorrow starts with the former Military Policeman making his way into New York on the Subway - sounds like a normal occurance, but such things never tend to end that way when Reacher is about, and while running through the Israeli produced “Watch-list” that identifies potential suicide bombers, Reacher realises he has a problem - there’s a very, very good chance the lady sitting a few rows in front of him is a suicide bomber…
I’m the first to admit that Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher books aren’t what would be classed as great literature - put it this way they’re never gonna appear on any “Serious Award lists”. What they do offer though, if you’re prepared to suspend your sense of dis-belief, are some bloody good, if a wee-bit far fetched, stories.
Unusually for a Lee Child book, I hadn’t read all that much about this online, other than the “promotional blurb” that appears on the back of the book:
Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs. Mostly because they’re nervous. By definition they’re all first-timers.
There are twelve things to look for. No one who has worked in law enforcement will ever forget them.
New York City. The subway, two o’clock in the morning. Jack Reacher studies his fellow passengers. Four are OK. The fifth isn’t…
For some reason I’d got it into my head that the entire book was gonna focus around the “suicide bomber”, especially once I started reading it, and noticed that the book is written from a first person perspective (Most of the Reacher books are written from a third person perspective), which I thought would be a really, really interesting idea - an almost 400 page book that revolves around Jack trying to stop a suicide bomber?
It turns out the actual “suicide bomber on a train” part of the book only lasts for a few chapters, and the remainder of the book covers how the person came to be on the train, displaying the signs that caught Reachers attention, and the aftermath.
In short I liked it, but it did move a little bit slow for around 100 pages or so, after the “start”, but things definitely pick up as the book approaches a typically violent finale.
Lee Childs next book, 61 Hours, is set to be released in April / May 2010 (he releases one new Reacher story every 12 months). However, if you’re new to the world of Reacher, you can download for free, a copy of Persuader, the 7th book in the series, from:
http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/leechild/
As for the next book I’m gonna read? Well I’ve decided to tackle a book that’s been on my “to read list” for about 4 years now - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
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