Krishna
Lee Child’s thrillers are brilliant – We have reviewed Killing Floor and Running Blind among others in the past. This one is great, as well.
Two people are watching the habits of a young school girl to understand her routine. That cannot be good! Meanwhile, Reacher is goaded into defending himself against a bully in a bar. When he realizes that the victim is actually a policeman and is coming for him with backup, he runs and gets a ride with a young lady in an expensive car.
Her name is Carmen, She admits that she was kind of ‘looking for a rough guy’ and she needs ‘urgent, desperate help’ for something about which she cannot go to the police. She lies to him about being abused, though it appears that she was indeed abused by her husband until a few years ago. Her husband’s family is tormenting her but the daughter who was born is kept under their control too. She knows that she can leave any time but cannot leave her daughter. When the husband goes to prison, there is a respite from daily beating, but she knows he will be released in about a year and beatings will resume.
He tests her and then believes that she is telling the truth. He agrees to help her. He poses as a horse minder and gets employment and sees the daily humiliation of the girl first hand. He does not know about horses, but Ellie, the daughter, takes a liking to him, a fact that is noted with animosity by the brother of Sloop, the abusive husband.
She asks him to teach her to shoot and in finding a range, Reacher realizes by the tire tracks that some people have been watching her ranch. He tries to persuade her to get rid of the small gun she bought but she refuses.
When her husband comes back, Reacher tries to warn him but police are called to take him away. Before they could reach the station, they have to turn back because Carmen had shot him dead. She is in prison and Reacher tries to rescue her when the police DA tells him that Carmen has lied to him all along. She was not from a rich family, she was a whore who hooked Sloop into marrying her. Sloop was a Southern gentleman who may not be a nice guy but beating girls is not something he would do. When medical records arrive, there are too few and do not support Carmen’s version. Still Reacher adamantly believes in her innocence. He engages Alice, a newbie lawyer but who is clever, but Carmen refuses to accept her as her lawyer with no explanation. She seems to spurn every help anyone offers her.
Reacher seems defeated by the overwhelming odds when he is confronted with the fact that Carmen had confessed willingly and then decides to leave town. When he is in the bus, just before it is to start, he has a revelation and then goes back to the lawyer Alice who was trying unsuccessfully to represent Carmen. Reacher had found her for Carmen and she refused representation.
The mayor Hank seems all sympathetic as he wants to be elected a Judge to do good but is afraid that if he sent Carmen to jail, he will lose the election. When Reacher goes to see the body, he realizes that something is totally wrong. He guesses that the lawyer Al was killed (and just did not go missing) and tells the police exactly where to look for the body. His certainty intensifies.
He knows that now the assassins who had taken the daughter (posing as Child Care Services) have taken Ellie away and are blackmailing Carmen. He knows that he and Alice are their next targets and stages a brilliant ambush after collecting all the arms from the family of Sloop.
The scene is spectacular and the twist on who is ordering the killing and why – Carmen could not have done it given the evidence of the body – is another great surprise.
The way Reacher figures everything out and traps the culprit is amazing, and the deceptions that the culprit has done, which Reacher patiently narrates, is shocking. This book has Reacher in high action as well as in a fabulous intellectual exercise.
There are a few surprises for Reacher, like when he sees the FBI outfits of his attackers (before realizing the truth) or does not find evidence of the vehicles he needed to see in the motel where he suspects Ellie is being held against her will, before realizing what he thought wrong are all good.
Even when the evil person is dead, the book goes on at top speed as they try to locate a missing child.
It is an amazing book, on par with some of his earlier books.
8/10
– – Krishna