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3.89 AVERAGE


I thoroughly enjoyed this installment of Jack Reacher. I think a little space between reading the previous one and a couple of significant changes to the 'normal' Jack Reacher tale made me give this book 5 stars. I particularly liked how the weather impacted virtual every element of the story, something I can not recall Lee Child doing in a previous Jack Reacher book. Also the interaction between Reacher and the female connection in this book, is dealt with very differently, I don't include spoilers in my reviews so can not elaborate on his.

A drugs lord in South America, the whole of the South Dakota Bolton Police force, a new prison, a gang of bikers, a retired librarian, a coach of 25 retired people and their coach driver on there way to visit Mount Rushmore and not forgetting Jack Reacher. Lee Child very cleverly unravels a great modern thriller, he really never does disappoint. I enjoyed reading all of the characters in the book, I never once felt the need to skip a paragraph. Deputy Andrew Peterson and little old lady Janet Salter quickly had a rounded and respected relationship with Reacher, you could feel the emotion and turmoil they were experiencing.

One of my favourite Jack Reacher books, so far.

Lots of suspense all the way through and an original storyline. I managed to guess who the villain was quite early but then I had fun spotting all the clues that confirmed my suspicions!
adventurous slow-paced
tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No

I generally prefer the urban Reacher stories; but the small-town ones characteristically reveal that Lee Child is deeply influenced by the village whodunit tradition of his native UK as well as the shoot-em-up thrillers of his adopted USA. As Agatha Christie showed us, there is nothing like a good snowstorm to trap all the interested parties in a tiny snow-globe of paranoia, claustrophobia, and unremitting tension. But this author has gone far beyond the gentle whiteouts of England to fully depict the killing winters of South Dakota -- where a minute outdoors would leave you "shaking too hard to see, let alone shoot. After an hour you would be in a coma. After two, you would be dead."

Maybe it isn't even an urban-rural split in the Child books that I prefer... maybe it's more the ones that exploit a unique terrain whether urban or rural, versus those that could be basically anywhere. The plot here is strange and unlikely, but it mostly gets that way based on an extremely specific set of facts and actions -- so much so that it's hard to blurb this particular adventure without spoilers. I also like this author's consistent admiration for courage, intellectual curiosity, and principle above all other virtues in women as well as men... even if those characteristics tend to be allied to a fatal level of idealism or naivete or both.

The mark of a great genre series in my mind is that you can't remember the world without it; and 14 titles into this one, I definitely can't. Somehow Jack Reacher effortlessly embodies the state of things now -- not just after 9/11 but in a basically contracting economy where ordinary people are supposed to be grateful for any steady job that decides to move into their town. The subtle opportunities for... not corruption per se, but the fading of checks and balances, or the triumph of human nature over law, are the forces that drive Reacher's adventures because they also drive our local governments and economies now.

A tense thriller - Reacher at the top of his game, in the snow, with mysterious goings-on and drug dealers.

One of his best
adventurous mysterious medium-paced

My first Jack Reacher book. It was ok. A little slow for my liking. I like Jack’s character. I like the mystery in the book but ending was a little far fetched.
dark mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No