4 of 5 stars
Series: Jack Reacher 17
My version: Paperback
Fiction Thriller
Bantam Books
2012
Bought
When you’re as big and rough as Jack Reacher – and you have a badly set, freshly busted nose – it isn’t easy to hitch a ride. At last, he’s picked up by three strangers – two men and a woman.
Within minutes it becomes clear they’re lying about everything – and there’s a police roadblock ahead. There has been an incident, and the cops are looking for the bad guys…
Will they get through because the three are innocent? Or because they are now four? is Reacher just a decoy?
A very good, twisty, slowly unravelling tale, involving Reacher being Reacher and using his grey matter as only Reacher can. There are several levels of threat here and it would be nice sometimes, if Reacher did admit something like ‘I’m shit-scared I’ve bitten off more than I can chew here!” But that’s probably never going to happen, not if Lee Child wants his books to keep on selling, that is. Which is a kind of point. Do we buy it because we know what’s going to happen, and we’re safe and secure in the knowlege we’re going to get our money’s worth? Whay am I reading these books? In the hope that Reacher gets looked at a bit more closely by Lee Child? Maybe. Maybe I too like to lean back and know that no matter the problem, Reacher can fight his way out of it. That’s going to come to an end at some point, people – me – are going to want something more, or even something different. Reacher will have served his purpose – and that isn’t just an excuse for Lee Child to write in characters named after Aston Villa managers and ex-footballers – and the next thing will come along. One a year is going to be a strain on Lee Child and us. Not that he should worry. And I won’t have to worry that Reacher hasn’t changed his underwear in days.
What is also good about books like this, is that you really could jump in anywhere in the series and get the maximum out of the book. This one is set in the here and the now, others are back when Reacher was in the army, so whilst here there is the carry over from the last nook, of the broken and self-set nose, each book is pretty much self-contained. I’m reading them all in sequence, but I can see that I could have started anywhere and not lost any of the effect. For that, Lee Child also deserves praise. Not an easy trick to pull off I’d imagine.
You can buy A Wanted Man at Booksplea.se
Related reviews on Speesh Reads:
