Paperbacks Plus

Lee Child's DIE TRYING

After 13 years in the Army as an MP, Reacher just wanted to muster out and disappear.  Two days in one place is enough.  He owns no property, has no credit cards, no phone.  He barely owns the clothes he wears.  He just wants to travel the United States with no obligations.  The problem is, it's hard to blend into the scenery when you're 6'5", and you weigh 250 muscular pounds.  And worse still when your courtly manners embroil you in a kidnap right on the streets of Chicago on a beautiful summer's day.
That's where DIE TRYING, the second novel in Lee Child's Jack Reacher canon, starts.  From there, he and the kidnap target, who harbors her own secrets, end up lost in the heart of America's great expanse, at the mercy of men who seek to separate themselves from a "despotic" United States government.  By force, if necessary.
Tough and brutal, yet clever and brilliantly conceived, DIE TRYING may not be for the faint-hearted, but its intelligence and strong writing will crackle in your head.  The Jack Reacher books provide me with a dilemma: the pages fly past my eyes, yet I want to delay my departure from Reacher's company as long as possible.
I hope Lee Child keeps spinning out these Jack Reacher yarns for many years.

Ray @ Paperbacks Plus

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Jack Reacher novel #1

    Lee Child is the name of a rising star in the thriller mystery genre. If you haven't heard of him, you soon will. His most recent book, Bad Luck & Trouble published by Bantam Dell, is #3 on the NY Times bestseller list. Over the next few week my colleague and myself will be review all 10 of the Jack Reacher novels.

        The first book in the series is The Killing Floor published by Jove. Although not the first story chronologically, it’s the one that introduces the reader to the ex-military policeman Jack Reacher. I had read 2 other books in the series before this one and I had already come to enjoy the gruff, take no prisoners attitude of Reacher. That attitude is what drew me in from the first page to the last. Reacher, five months after leaving the army, has become a drifter. Aimlessly wandering from town to town on a whim. He happens upon Margrave, Georgia, and promptly gets arrested for murder.

What follows is part mystery part thriller. Reacher doesn’t wrestle with moral problems or fear of what repercussions his actions have. That’s not to say he is a loose cannon. The control he has over himself is testament to his training. He may be rough around the edges, but he is a character that I’ve come to appreciate. I wont try to sugar coat this or any of his books, they are not for the weak of heart. At times the descriptions can be quite unappetizing. I’ve since read the majority of Lee Childs’ Reacher novels, and I’ve come to see them as sum of every great 90’s action film. This is a book that you cannot go wrong with, a great summer read.

Liam @ Paperbacks Plus