There's a line in Lee Child's tenth Jack Reacher novel, "The Hard Way," that sums things up perfectly:
"Reacher, alone in the dark. Armed and dangerous. Invincible" [page 420]
Former US Army MP Major Jack Reacher has been wandering among us for eleven years now, since "The Killing Floor" from 1997. Lee Child's debut novel and first in this series, earned both the Anthony and Barry Awards for Best First Novel. Reacher is a tough guy to know, much less to love. But he's the one person you'd want by your side in a showdown; that much is certain.
The man travels light:
"...Reacher had long ago quit carrying things he didn't need. There was nothing in his pockets except paper money and an expired passport and an ATM card and a clip-together toothbrush. There was nothing waiting for him anywhere else, either. No storage unit in a distant city, nothing stashed with friends. He owned the things in his pockets and the clothes on his back and the shoes on his feet. That was all, and that was enough. Everything he needed, and nothing he didn't." [excerpt from "Nothing to Lose," installment 12, 2008; page 6]
Writers of mystery thrillers have been inventing big, tough, self-reliant protagonists like Jack Reacher for decades, maybe longer. Robert Parker's Spenser, John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee, and James Patterson's Alex Cross are all equally larger than life. They also have homes; Jack Reacher does not. He's a wanderer who charts his own course - and always manages to find trouble, of course.
Trouble finds Reacher this time in an outdoor cafe in New York City. He sees an unremarkable man approach a parked Mercedes, get in and drive away. Reacher learns, the next night, that the car contained a million-dollar ransom. Edward Lane, commander of a small force of ex-military mercenaries, desperately wants his wife and her daughter back; and he asks Reacher, accidental witness, to help find them. $9.5 million in fruitless ransoms later, our hero is deeply entangled in an intriguing web of conflicting signals.
All the signs say that Lane's wife, Kate and step-daughter, Jade will never be returned alive. That's when the wealthy general-for-hire offers Reacher $1 million to track down the kidnappers. Reacher accepts, but not for the money. He wants justice for Kate and Jade. He teams up with former FBI agent Lauren Pauling to dig out the truth. Their investigation leads them first to London, then deep into rural England beyond Norfolk, and finally to an explosive confrontation between good and evil.
"Reacher, alone in the dark. Invincible."
Lee Child has a piercing eye for the perfect detail. He scatters clues and foreshadowing in every scene; the smallest gesture or the most trivial item could be the one that points Reacher to the answers he seeks. Every leg of Reacher's journey is precisely described. In this scene, Reacher encounters three of Lane's mercenaries in an English pub house a world away from New York:
"The room was decorated in the same style as the foyer. Low ceiling beams, dark varnished wood, ornate wall sconces, thousands of brass ornaments, a wall-to-wall carpet patterned in a riot of red and gold swirls. Reacher moved toward the fireplace. Tapped the toes of his shoes against the edge of the hearth to shed some mud. Took a heavy iron poker from a hook and used the end of it to scrape dirt off his heels. Then he hung the poker back up and flapped at the bottom of his pant legs with his hands. Altogether he spent more than a minute cleaning up, with his back turned, but he was watching a clear convex reflection of the table in a bright copper bucket that held kindling sticks. And nobody was moving. The three guys were just sitting there, waiting. Smart enough not to start anything in a public place." [page 435]
Child's dialog is crisp and succinct. His characters are expertly drawn and never two-dimensional. Not a single scene is superfluous or gratuitous; sub-plots are rare and unneeded. Even Reacher's quirks are tidy: he can keep time in his head effortlessly (and inexplicably); he loves the mysterious power of math and numbers. His shoes are British, and expensive. His owns only one change of clothing at a time, replacing it only as necessary. He has little use for creature comforts and none at all for possessions. (Reacher leaves $9 million behind in "The Hard Way," for instance!)
The Jack Reacher series is always engrossing. Each plot drives only forward, free of detours. Child rarely bothers with flashbacks. One complaint, however: each new installment carries almost nothing forward from its predecessors. Reacher doesn't "grow" very much over time. Perhaps that's by design. You can, for the most part, read these stories in whatever order you choose. Child shows no sign of fatigue, either. Reacher's adventures unfold faithfully each year, with no side trips by the author. Readers never have long to wait for the next part of the journey. Book #13, "Gone Tomorrow," was released in May 2009.
"The Hard Way," one of Amazon.com's Top 50 Books 2006, delivers everything Child has promised all along. You can put it down for an hour or two mid-novel; but you won't stay away for long. As Reacher moves irrepressibly toward justice, readers are driven to find out what lies around the next bend.
*Highly recommended*
["The Hard Way" fiction hardcover 384 pages, Lee Child 2006, publisher Delacorte $26.50 US. Available in paperback]