My first Jack Reacher book – and my new favorite action hero!
I’m not sure how I never read a Lee Child book before, but it was about damn time, because Jack Reacher is right up my alley!
If you’ve been living under a rock like me, Jack Reacher is an ex-military loner who has a knack for finding his way into trouble, and a habit of not being able to walk away without solving it first. I imagine that’s the case for all the Jack Reacher books, and it’s definitely the case here.
In 61 Hours, Reacher finds himself on a bus going through South Dakota that just happens to crash during a snowstorm. Luckily for all the old tourists, Reacher is there to figure out how to get them out of the blizzard and into the nearest town, but that’s where things start getting weird.
The local police are all on high alert. Roads are blocked off, houses are being watched, and Reacher can’t help his interest being piqued. With no way out of town, and since he’s already been helpful with the bus crash, he ends up staying overnight with the assistant chief of police, who eventually lets him in on what’s going on.
There’s a witness in town—an old lady who saw a drug deal go down and is preparing to testify about it—and the police know that someone’s coming after her. Now that Reacher happens to be there, maybe he can help them out? There’s only 61 hours to go.
I love Child’s writing style. The book is long, but doesn’t feel like it, because it’s easily read and there’s constantly something going on. Reacher is an exciting action hero. He’s big, strong and stoic, but not in a dark and dreary kind of way. And what really makes him interesting his how he sees what others don’t, analyses and calculates every little thing. You get to follow along on all his thought processes, and you get a sense of how he sees the world. Every little thing he says and does is carefully planned out, and it makes him so damn entertaining.
Child’s writing is like that as well. Everything means something, even the smallest things. I’m impressed at how he manages to pull everything together, he must have a massive cork board full of notes and pins with red strings crisscrossing his office.
The only thing negative thing about this, and it’s not really a thing at all, is that one of the (many) twists in this was quite obvious. So obvious that I was thinking to myself, it can’t possibly be that easy, he’s tricking me, but then he didn’t.
Lee Child is fantastic, and I’m definitely going to read more Jack Reacher.
I had the honor of having my own psychological crime thriller be compared to Lee Child once – and now that I know what that entails, I’m bearing that badge with a lot of pride. So if you’re a fan of thrillers like these, check out my books!
Trey Stone, Author 