The Secret Service agent needs a simple favor of Jack Reacher: "I want to hire you to assassinate the Vice President of the United States," she asks. Newly appointed to the head of the vice presidents security team, she needs Reacher to test their strength, to try to penetrate her detail's shield. Certainly Reacher has the skill, certainly he has the stealth and anonymity. How else will she know her team is truly ready for a threat, than to pit them against Reacher?
What she doesn't let Reacher know, but what he soon finds out, is that a threat, a living but deadly mob of assassins, is targeting the vice president and will stop at nothing to follow through to the end. They are organized, but they didn't factor in Reacher. Only he has the brains and the guts to corner his prey and meet them with justice, without fail.
Lee Child is the pen name of Jim Grant. He writes commercial thrillers about a former military cop named Jack Reacher. Child was born in 1954 and raised in England. Child studied law but also worked backstage at a theatre and eventually worked in commercial television upon graduating college. He produced over forty thousand hours of programming, wrote thousands of commercials, news stories, and trailers. He was laid off after corporate restructuring and began his career as a novelist with his first book Killing Floor. His prose style has been called hardboiled and commercial, and he considers novels the purest form of entertainment.
"Reacher ends up on a team investigating the vulnerability of the vice president to an attack. (His involvement has a connection to both his dead brother and to his background in the Army's CID/MPs. It makes fictional sense once the plot, which is convincing, kicks in.) Working with him is his brother's long-time girlfriend and Neleigh, the toughest of his former colleagues, who is also a main character in "Bad Luck and Trouble.) Upon rereading, this book is confirmed in my judgment as the best of the Reacher books (tied with "Echo Burning" and "The Enemy.") It excells in all categories, especially writing. It is incredibly suspenseful and I will read it yet again in a couple of years."
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Larry (5 out of 5 stars)