Krishna
Here is the new master of thriller for these times. Very vivid, crisp descriptions – an action thriller with a brain. The pace is unrelenting and you meet a new action hero who is now justly famous.
Jack Reacher is arrested by police at gunpoint. He is a man who was in a new city and prime suspect in a murder case, though Jack knows he is innocent of the crime. That he has had no identification and the fact that he was walking in the street and what’s more, fit the description of a man seen near the murder spot by witnesses makes the police very suspicious of him.
He convinces the detectives that he is innocent but they are in a quandary because the chief himself reports having seen him earlier and so he is in lock up. When they discover that the phone number in the boot belongs to a yuppie called Hubble, they bring him in and he confesses to the murder. And yet, the police (with Jack’s assistance) realize that neither Jack nor Hubble could have committed the murder but are forced to keep them in jail for they were still suspects. Hubble turns out to be a close relative of the police chief, which throws further sand in the works of police duty.
A brilliant scene where Jack teaches goons who try to ‘appropriate him’ a thing or two in bravery and gains a reputation for toughness. He learns that his cellmate is being blackmailed into even admitting to the murder he did not commit.
There is another attack on his life which he thwarts ruthlessly. Brilliant descriptions of the fight.
He realizes that Spvy, the prison superintendent, wanted him killed. Finally they let him go and his companion walks off. He wants to have a final dinner with the cute female officer who took a shine to him and then leave the town forever. He has had enough of an adventure.
He learns about Kilner’s an influential family whom no one wants to talk about. When another body turns up near the first one, he seems to be drawn in against his will to investigate. Hubble seems to have disappeared.
Chief Morrison and his wife are murdered brutally, his having been nailed to the wall and his testicles missing (presumably stuffed into his wife who was murdered) – the exact threat that Hubble received. Since Jack knows that it is the work of a gang for Morrison slipping up, they watch the next guy taking charge of the police, knowing that he is one of the guys. It turns out to be Mayor Teasle.
Convinced that Hubble is murdered, he gets his wife and kids into the unofficial protection of an FBI agent, a friend of Finlay. Roscoe and he go off to a trip across the border, only to come back and find her house broken into. The overshoe patterns tell Jack that if they had been in the house, they would have been murdered in an identical way to Morrison.
You know what’s so great? All the inferences in the story. Why is the new guy not the head of the gang? Because Morrison’s death was a warning to whoever takes charge (one of the gang) next and the Mayor would not set up a warning for himself. Right? Lovely logic keeps you absorbed and reading.
When Joe’s fiancee comes to help them, where she almost finds him in an airport in a tense setting, she is murdered unexpectedly, and dies in Jack’s arms.
They nevertheless figure out what the racket is about, thanks to a clue from Roscoe’s ex boyfriend, a cop, who had given a ‘gun’ in a box for her to keep safe. The gig is fake currency that is brought in from abroad and distributed all over the country.
They finally figure that the stuff is coming in and not out. And having figured out that Blake is a plant in the police operation, Jack feeds him false information and kills all five of the goons who come to kill him in a surprise ambush. You see another twist coming, slowly taking shape.
Also, he finally figures out how they get the paper for the currency counterfeiting, in a phenomenal feature of thinking it through. The press, the ink are easy to get but the paper? It is the hardest. One of the clues is that the US currency are all the same size. Unique in the world.
When he waits for Picard to come with Roscoe, he finds out that Picard is one of the bad guys and that his life is in threat with Teale the Mayor, the papa Kilner crowding in. Roscoe pleads with him via tape that her life is in danger unless Jack does what these guys are asking her to do.
Finlay and Roscoe are held as hostages while Jack goes with Picard and two goons following in another car behind. What happens next is pure adrenaline filled action of the Lee Child variety. By this time you are addicted to his style of writing and want more.
The book gets with action against impossible odds and the last few pages would do any Mission Impossible or a James Bond movie proud.
It is meant to take you on a ride (fairly improbable but very good to hear) and it does it so well.
8/10
– – Krishna (Mar 2019)