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May 22, 2009
If you see something, say something
Lee Child’s 13th Jack Reacher novel, “Gone Tomorrow” (Delacorte Press), landed in bookstores Tuesday .
The thrillers about a loner ex-military policeman have become a global publishing phenomenon — 22 million copies in print and the last two books debuted in the number one position on The New York Times bestseller list — so the author no longer needs the endorsement of reviewers.
But, Child deserves high praise for keeping a crime fiction series at such a high level of achievement for more than a decade — indeed, the new one might be the best Reacher adventure yet because of its mind-boggling opening sequence and the fact that Child adds several new elements to his sensationally effective formula.
Child fans know that he has always found clever and amusing ways to suck his hero into a caper that Reacher isn’t really looking for.
In two recent novels, the hero is in the middle of enjoying — or looking for — a cup of coffee when something odd pushes him to find out what's going on.
Reacher should know by now that trouble comes looking for him in the strangest guises.
The first scene in “Gone Tomorrow” ups the Reacher-interest ante in a way that he cannot possibly ignore. Sitting in an almost empty Lexington Ave. subway car heading uptown, very late one night, Reacher notices an ordinary-looking middle-aged white lady who is exhibiting extraordinarily weird behavior. Our protagonist starts registering the wrong notes emanating from this woman — she is wearing a very heavy coat in a very warm subway car and is murmuring or chanting to herself. Reacher quickly ticks off the close-to-airtight list of the 11 behavioral quirks that Israeli intelligence agents associate with a female suicide bomber.
Child somehow manages to sustain the novelty — and compulsive suspense — of the opening few chapters for more than 400 pages of escalating violence, black comedy and pointed observations on New York paranoia in the post-9/11 era. Toss in a sinister U.S. Senator, two horrifying female killers, and what might be a small army of al Qaeda operatives creeping through Union Square in the middle of the night and you’ve got a political thriller worthy of comparison with Richard Condon’s “The Manchurian Candidate.”
Posted by Joe on May 22, 2009 1:15 PM
