The Hard Way

A few weeks ago I promised a review of the latest book I'd been reading, The Hard Way. Well, here it is.

Another Jack Reacher thriller from the genre-winning Lee Child, this time our transient hero is hired to look into the kidnapping of an ex-special forces commander, Lane. Being forced to play nice with the rest of Lane's mercenaries (all ex-special forces with bad records), Reacher isn't exactly thrilled. Throughout the course of his investigation into the kidnap of Lane's second wife and their young daughter the ex-MP begins to turn up a whole host of incongruities that make him think there's more to the situation that was first made apparent.

I'll not spoil the twists and turns of the plot here (there's a doozy of a twist, though), suffice it to say they're pretty myriad. This is one of those books where, upon analysis, not a lot actually happens, but it is such a page turner. With more chapters than any other Child novel I have read, I got through this very fast. There are cliffhangers at every time as you follow Reacher's investiagtion, putting together the clues and cycling through the evidence with him. More than once, Reacher's, and my, assumptions were turned on their head toi dramatic effect. There's a predictable, but exciting, showdown at the end of what is a great piece of genre fiction with clever story telling and juxtaposition as always.

Particular note goes to Child's handling of the scenes in Britain (much of the final third takes place in London and Norwich), making them sound alien to Reacher but oddly familiar at the same time (Child is a British export who writes in the US).

Not Child's best book to date (that goes to his authorial debut, The Killing Floor), but The Hard Way is a great thriller in it's own right.