Never forgive, never forget. That's Jack Reacher's standard operating procedure. And Francis Xavier Quinn was the worst guy he had ever met. He had done truly unforgivable things. So Reacher was glad to know he was dead. Until the day he saw him, alive and well, riding in a limousine outside Boston's Symphony Hall. Never apologize. Never explain. When Reacher witnesses a brutal attempt to kidnap a terrified young student on a New England campus, he takes the law into his own hands. That's his way, after all. Only this time, a cop dies, and Reacher doesn't stick around to explain. Has he lost his sense of right and wrong? Just because this time, it's personal?

About the Author

LEE CHILD is British, but after he was made redundant from his job in television, he moved with his family from Cumbria to the United States to start a new career as a writer of American thrillers. He now divides his time between France and New York. All his novels feature the maverick Jack Reacher, and all have been international bestsellers.

Reviews

A cross between a modern-day John Wayne and a much younger Clint Eastwood, Jack Reacher is back in this eighth adventure, and fans will be delighted. A retired army major who served as an MP and criminal investigator, Reacher roams the United States and invariably runs across a major crime or terrorist incident that requires him to "put things right," albeit in his own unique and violent way. Here he discovers a diabolical enemy whom he thought a decade dead, as well as a major smuggler and his sadistic bodyguard living in a gothic horror of a mansion overlooking the sea. Reacher allies himself with a band of FBI agents who want to bring down the bad guys and find one of their own who's missing. Persuader includes a number of intriguing plot twists, and Reacher always finds himself in tense, tight, and exciting situations. Intelligently written, Child's latest thriller is recommended for most popular fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/03.]-Robert Conroy, Warren, MI Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

The promo copy on the ARC of Child's new thriller proclaims, "We dare to make this claim: Lee Child is the best thriller writer you're probably not reading-yet." Hopefully the "six-figure" marketing campaign promised by Child's new publisher will make that statement obsolete, because readers will be hard-pressed to find a more engaging thriller this spring season. Child is a master of storytelling skills, not least the plot twist, and the opening chapter of this novel spins a doozy, as a high-octane, extremely violent action sequence sees Child hero Jack Reacher rescue a young man, 20-year-old Richard Beck, from an attempted kidnapping before the rug is pulled out from under the reader with the chapter's last line. The rest of the novel centers on the Beck family's isolated, heavily guarded estate on the Maine coast where Reacher takes Richard. Richard's father is suspected by Feds of being a major drug dealer and the kidnapper of another Fed, and also seems to have ties to a fiend who killed Reacher's lady 10 years before, someone Reacher thought he'd killed in turn, in a vengeance slaying. Tension runs high, then extremely high, as Reacher, ingratiating himself with the dealer and hired on as a bodyguard, pokes around the estate, looking for the kidnapped Fed and evading and/or disposing of in-house bad guys as they begin to suspect he's not who he seems. But then little in Child's novels is as it at first seems, and numerous further plot twists spark the story line. What makes the novel really zing, though, is Reacher's narration-a unique mix of the brainy and the brutal, of strategic thinking and explosive action, moral rumination and ruthless force, marking him as one of the most memorable heroes in contemporary thrillerdom. Any thriller fan who has yet to read Lee Child should start now. (May 13) Forecast: The publisher is aiming at Father's Day sales, and with the help of a massive campaign, including print, radio and airline advertising, Child could be poised to reap the sort of sales he deserves. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.