Never Go Back is Lee Child’s latest
and most anticipated Jack Reacher novel.
He is even charging admission to his book signing events. Even with such high expectations Child does
not disappoint.
After
thousands of miles of hitchhiking, Jack Reacher returns to his former unit, the
110th MP Special Unit in hopes of finally meeting the sexy voice on
the phone of Major Susan Turner. Turner
now the commander of the unit was introduced four books earlier as Reacher’s
love interest and he has traveled far and wide to ask her out to dinner. Reacher is surprised to find that not only
has Turner been arrested and relieved of her command but Reacher too is
immediately returned to active duty while an investigation against him is
pursued. Seems two law suits are pending
against him from his long ago military days. One involves the beating to death of a
suspect and the other a paternity suit, both from Los Angeles but neither of
which he remembers.
Reacher
who trained himself to turn fear into aggression, suspects these law suits
have been recently created to make him run and forget about Major Turner. Instead he is compelled to covertly investigate
his and Major Turner’s charges which quickly lands him in the same prison as
Turner. In a matter of hours, he orchestrates
their escape and he and Turner are off to California with $30 cash borrowed unwittingly
from his attorney.
Their
journey leads them to encounters with West Virginia meth dealers, military MPs,
the FBI, and Army Special Forces.
Reacher and Turner form a special bond while smashing heads, breaking
arms and fingers, and shooting those in their way, all for the purpose of
clearing their sullied names by revealing and punishing their foes.
Never Go Back is Child at his best… a
master of suspense and mystery. He develops
a character we know only in fiction but fantasize is real. He makes every chapter an adventure in and of
itself yet weaves in clever connections to the plots of this and previous novels… very
efficient… nothing irrelevant. We are
relieved by the outcome not so much that justice prevails but that Jack Reacher
lives on so Child can craft future tales.
This is the essence of the genre that is Men Reading Books.
You might venture to say I've been sitting in Alaska for years, but I've never been introduced to Child until listening to an archived interview on the Book report radio show's website. 18 years 18 Reacher sequels - but what I want to know is; should I be starting with the first one, or is this a stand alone book?
ReplyDeleteWhile each of Child's Jack Reacher novels is enjoyable on its own, I feel like you would miss a lot of context by reading this one first. The 'voice on the phone' Reacher finally meets in this book was introduced 3 or 4 books ago and his traveling to Virginia has been an under current to his adventures since then. Each book in the series colors in more of Reacher's character so you will be initially surprised by his actions where ever you begin. I'd advise jumping in the middle of the series somewhere. Depending on how well you like the first, it will guide you to how invested you want to be in reading all 18 Jack Reacher novels. I particularly enjoyed The Affair because it was a flashback that filled in some of the context missing in some of the real time settings of his other books. Hope this helps. Enjoy.
ReplyDeleteReally, the story is preposterous, but it is told with such skill. If I didn't have too many other things to get done, this would have been a book that I would not have put down until finished. Preposterous - definitely. I loved it.
ReplyDeleteJust finished. Of course it's preposterous. If any Reacher book resembled our pathetic lives, we'd never read them. And I think there was more Reacher dialogue in this book than in the previous 4 or 5 total!. Very cool . . . a one sitting read in another life; a Saturday - Monday read this time. Now, another year wait for the next installment. Hope Hollywood comes out with another Reacher movie in the meantime.
ReplyDelete