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Average Customer Rating:

The world needs more Jack Reacher's!	Customer Rating:
Child rarely disappoints. Jack Reacher makes my day. I wish he was real!

So Well Constructed

Customer Rating:

The bottom line is there is a payoff to everything. I'm reading the Child stuff in no particular order so at first I thought maybe this early stuff was a lesson in how Child changed over the years. Perhaps how he learned to cut out the unnecessary parts. I thought the long first visit with his mother (and brother) in France was pointless, but of course not. It comes back and it roars back with emotion and a direct impact on the character of Reacher. At first I thought some extraneous characters early on were bumps in the road, but of course not. They come back. In fact, pretty much everybody is in play. The beginning here shows how to start with a brilliant thread and watch how it can unravel a whole spool. That thread even includes the time and date of the year. I feel compelled to make a point about Child side by side with Michael Connelly. The fun is in watching Reacher and Bosch piece things together, seeing them press their own thinking, seeing them process tiny tidbits, storing them away like nuts for the winter until they are needed. Both Child and Connelly know how to slow the action down and dwell on the thought process itself, which is the fun of following a mystery-crime novel. And, finally, both authors ground their characters in real government agencies (at least in this book for Child) that feels real and adds a source of pressure to their main characters' challenges. Reacher's relationship here with Summer is interesting and strong and Reacher isn't afraid to use her as a sounding board, even as a resource. I would still say the search for the crowbar scene was much too long. So are some of the time-killing scenes in Paris, but only by comparison to the other fast-track action. Some of the driving around and flying around gets a bit tedious, but there are even insights there which are enjoyable. The finish is right up there, even across multiple time zones and with action that is over the top. I really have no idea why this wouldn't make a great movie; you'd just need to clip a few of the scenes with, well, padding. For completists, of course, you'll read this. For those who are only going to read a few, this might be a good choice, particularly if you want to see Reacher working within the Army bureaucracy and before he became the near mythical drifter-stranger-problem solver that he is in 2008.

OK, some of the criticisms are warrented, but

Customer Rating:

I still think this is my favorite Reacher novel so far (June 2008). So the author isn't up on USA military history and protocol, and pulled a couple of real bloopers like the location of Fort Irwin. But he makes up for it with great characters and some great comments (like the difference between what happens if you run your HumVee over unexploded ordinance versus a desert tortoise). Most "thriller" stories require that the reader suspend belief if you know anything at all about the specialized subject matter; novels with techie subjects like computers are almost always full of awful mistakes. So what if this one blew the military stuff here and there, it's still a great story about one of the best characters in thriller fiction today. I loved it, and even found myself "page turning" at 3am on a second read a month later. Anyone who loves Reacher has got to love this "prequel" to the Reacher series.

A great read for a long plane ride

Customer Rating:

I picked this book up for a long plane ride and was a few pages in before I realized that I'd read it before. However, Lee Child's writing is so sharp and Reacher's detection is so intelligent AND practical that I couldn't put it down and reread the whole story. Totally absorbing. For those who think that television shows on the work of military intelligence provide a good picture of what they do, I'd suggest reading this book for a much more insightful and exciting story, fascinating mystery - and, if you haven't read other Reacher books, an introduction to a great character.

Another Reacher classic	Customer Rating:
Another Lee Child classic. Pure fiction at its best, not too serious but entertaining to say the least. If you like this writer read Soft Target,and Soft Target 2 `Tank` by Conrad Jones, I read both on holiday they were hours of excitment on the sunbed!! Brilliant