Life was built out of freak chances, however much people would like to pretend otherwise." Just a freak of chance had put him alongside Holly Johnson at the exact time the snatch was going down. I love the way Lee Child addresses the topic right away: "He had no problem with how he had gotten grabbed up in the first place. I've no objection to coincidences at the beginning of a story as long as there's no deus ex machina ending. They've been waiting for the woman, Holly Johnson, an FBI agent, planning to kidnap her because of her relationship with a couple of very important people. As he catches her and supports her, two men show up with guns and push them into a car. ![]() Jack is about to pass a Chicago dry cleaner's when a woman exits the place and stumbles into him because of her injured leg. It starts off with a bit of a coincidence, which is something we've been discussing on DL lately. What we have in this book is nothing short of bad guys attempting to take over the U.S. Playboy said of this book, "This is such a brilliantly written novel that Child must be channeling Dashiell Hammett.Reacher handles the maze of clues and the criminal unfortunates with a flair that would make Sam Spade proud." (I bet some of our members didn't even know that Playboy wrote reviews! ) Some authors have a worldview that amazes me. The word that kept coming to my mind as I read this book was "Weltanschauung." (Well, that's the kind of mind I have.) Using that word in a sentence sounds a bit pretentious so I'll say Worldview or Philosophy of Life instead. Probably you've all read this book long ago, but I'm going to write about it anyway, because it's a terrific book and if you haven't read it, you should. He thought I might like to use the title on a future book. He saw a T-shirt thus inscribed and decided to bring it home to give me because he knew all of my mystery series titles had death or dying in the title. Last year my dentist went on vacation to a place called Die Trying in Baja. The reason I bought this one rather than the first or a later one is that I have a shirt to match it. I believe it was the second in the Jack Reacher series. It was published in hardcover in 1998, came out in paperback in 1999. This is not one of Lee Child's newer books.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |