Promotional Information

The new Jack Reacher novel from bestselling author Lee Child.

About the Author

LEE CHILD is British but moved with his family from Cumbria to the United States to start a new career as an American thriller writer. His first novel, KILLING FLOOR, won the Anthony Award, and his second, DIE TRYING, won W H Smith's Thumping Good Read Award. His most recent thrillers featuring Jack Reacher, the former US military cop and maverick drifter are TRIPWIRE, THE VISITOR; ECHO BURNING, WITHOUT FAIL and PERSUADER. All have been bestsellers.

Reviews

When a sniper coolly picks off five victims in Indiana, forensic evidence points incontrovertibly to ex-army man James Barr, who denies his guilt and calls for Jack Reacher-an odd choice given that the former MP investigated a similar crime committed by Barr in Kuwait 14 years earlier. Then just hours after being jailed, Barr inadvertently disses a fellow inmate, is beaten into a coma, and suffers amnesia, complicating the case. The more Reacher investigates, the more removed he finds Barr to be from the crime. Both the evidence and the police chief are too perfect, and a puppet master who will sacrifice innocents to remove Reacher from the scene seems to be pulling the strings, with help from an inside man. Child has written another taut thriller with plot twists and tension to the very end; fans will be torn between reading slowly to prolong their pleasure or skimming quickly to see how Reacher makes it out alive. Superlative suspense fiction by a master. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/05; see Q&A with Child on p. 70.-Ed.]-Michele Leber, Arlington, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

While reader Hill has proven himself to be an all-purpose narrator with a 200-plus audiography, his specialty is interpreting suspense and crime fiction like this bullet-paced thriller. Written lean enough to make Hemingway seem chatty, the ninth novel to feature the resourceful ex-military cop Jack Reacher begins with a bare-bones description of an unemotional sniper prepping for and carrying out a mass slaying in the business area of an unnamed Indiana city. The killer's dispassion is chilling, and Hill, who has narrated the author's previous titles, matches the mood with an objectivity that raises the goose-bump level even higher. When Reacher, one of fiction's more reticent heroes, arrives on the scene, Hill provides him with a brusque, confident, properly manly voice, but adds a note of wariness that subtly suggests the adventurer's cynical nature. This tops a gallery of smart audio portraits, each with his own identifiable accent. Child has purposely designed the novel to move forward unfettered by stylish flourishes, and Hill follows that plan, concentrating mainly on increasing the pace as the story speedballs to its satisfying conclusion. Simultaneous release with the Delacorte hardcover (Reviews, May 23). (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.