by Elaine Arthur

Created on: April 17, 2010

Lee Child has written roughly a dozen novels centered around his carefully developed character, Jack Reacher.  Reacher's detailed dossier is available at the Lee Child website:  http://www.leechild.com/reacher.php.

 In Persuader, published in 2003, the reader senses that Reacher's life has been caught at an in-between stage.  Narrating in the first person, Reacher tells us how just eleven days earlier, he'd been planning to leave New England's April chill and explore the warmer, friendlier climes around Miami.  

Before this plan can gain any traction, Reacher finds himself observing the movements of a man outside a concert hall.  The man does nothing unusual – he crosses the street and gets into a car.  But Reacher has recognized this man as someone he personally shot ten years before, to avenge the murder of someone he cared about.  The man went over a steep cliff into a stormy sea, and Reacher has contented himself with the assumption of his death for all these years.  But there is now no mistaking who he has seen.  Reacher contacts a former military acquaintance for help in tracing the license plate of the car, and within a few short hours, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration are knocking at his door.  

Reacher wants to find the no-longer dead man, Quinn, for reasons of his own.  The agents want to find him because one of their team is missing.  Reacher takes on this apparently impossible challenge because the missing agent is a woman, and he is all too familiar with Quinn's habits. 

With the DEA agents, Reacher concocts a plan that would have Hollywood stunt and makeup veterans salivating.  Quinn may not have any apparent vulnerabilities, but one of his associates does.  The associate has a wife and beloved son.  Reacher uses the son as a wedge to get inside the home of the associate.  

Once he accomplishes this feat, the tension and suspense in this novel are non-stop, supported by pacing that's just-right, some knockout procedural detail and stunning geographical description.  We are treated to an unbeatable combination of mystery, intrigue, domestic conflict, tentative romance, and physical challenge that will have you cringing about every 15 pages or so.  You'll wonder, again and again, just how Reacher is supposed to get out of this one.  

Child wisely waits until the reader is about 40 pages from the end before explaining why Reacher is so determined to take out Quinn.  Part of Reacher's appeal is his spare, often monosyllabic recitation of events.  Even so, what he tells us allows us to see him in three dimensions, and to cheer him on as he inches, often bloody and near-dead, toward his goal.

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