This is next in the story arc that began with 61 Hours then Worth Dying For (and maybe Nothing to Lose). We meet up with Jack doing one thing he does well - hitch hiking.Near midnight. Late night in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, a guy enters an abandoned pumping station, followed by 2 more guys, but only 2 leave. A witness to these men entering the pumping station calls the cops and a BOLO goes out for 2 guys on the interstate. But these guys have hedged their bets and car jack a waitress leaving her shift. The further hedge their bets by picking up a hitch hiker - Reacher. The cops are looking for 2 guys, not 3 and a woman. Roadblocks are easily handled.
See, Reacher is headed for Virginia to meet a woman dispatcher who helped him in the previous books. Thought she sounded nice. A ride is a ride and how many people are gonna pick up a 6'6" beast with mush for a nose, courtesy of the butt end of a shotgun? [that must be how Worth Dying For ended, but I can't remember] You take a ride when you can get a ride.
And they drive. Reacher thinks there are some sort of business team. The woman doesn't say much. The other 2 guys talk with Reacher, but things seem amiss. One guy says they've been driving for hours, but the car only takes a few gallons of gas, water bottles are still cold, no one uses the can when they stop for gas.
Prints of the dead guy ring alarms in the State Department, the anti-terror office of the FBI, and the CIA. The Omaha FBI is called in. It's no longer a routine murder, if any murder is routine.
What begins as a straight hunt for fugitives goes off the rails and rumbles across domestic and foreign terror groups, Cold War era shelters in the prairie, (multiple) undercover FBI, secret detention centers outside Kansas City, and lord knows what else.
I'll stop there with the plot summary. I've probably given away too much already. Let me just say that A Wanted Man is further reason why Lee Child is firmly entrenched in the MRB power rotation. The plot twists spin continually making this one very entertaining and engrossing thriller. While I can't remember details of all the previous Reacher books (and I've read them all), I think I can safely say that this is the most 'talk-y' story I can remember Child presenting. The first half of the book is conversation, supposition, guesswork, tossing theories back and forth (in the car and back in the town). No action to speak of, and it was riveting, absolutely riveting. Child really outdid himself on that account. Given a clean honey-do list, a day off work with no other commitments, this would have been read in one sitting. Without a doubt. One sitting. Only done that a couple times. We don't grades books here at MRB, but it we did, I'd give this one a solid "A".
Now we wait until December to see just how Tom Cruise is going to play Reacher.
East Coast Don
Nice review by ECD. Jack Reacher has a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or maybe it’s the right place at precisely the right time, depending on your perspective. In this case, Jack innocently stumbles into some bad guys who eventually can’t understand how their devious plans were undone by this guy. He is our prototypic hero in this blog of action/thriller books. Despite the ultimate risks to himself, Jack always does the right thing. I had a Sunday afternoon free to read this book, and I did it all in one day – my favorite way to read a good book. Child started out with a seemingly simple plot and just a couple characters, and it only got more complex at the end, after all the plot lines were well-established.
ReplyDeleteOkay, in the course of reading this novel, I did change venues from my back porch, to the beach, and the couch. I had to finish it in bed before I could turn out the lights. Tom Cruise will probably do a decent acting job as Jack Reacher, but he obviously does not fit the physical mode that Lee Child created, and I really wish someone else could have been cast in that role. We’ll see, but I’ll be ponying up the cost of a ticket or two in December.