Those already hooked on Lee Child’s thriller series know that Jack Reacher is the literary heir to Mike Hammer, Sir Lancelot and, perhaps, JackPaladin, the for-hire gunman of TV’s “Have Gun Will Travel.”
Like any number of 1940s pulp fiction antiheroes, Reacher is capable of doling out violence. But like Hammer, Lancelot or Paladin, Reacher – an ex-military policeman with no roots and few belongings – has a code by which he lives. That code of honor puts him squarely in the camp of the heroic, explaining why Child’s tough-guy thrillers appeal to women and men alike.
And Reacher’s sense of honor and duty once again comes into play in “The Hard Way,” his 10th fictional adventure.
While sitting in a New York Café, enjoying the crowds of passersby, Reacher is approached by a man who works for a company called Operational Security Consultants (OSC). Like Reacher, the men who work for the company are ex-military.
John Gregory, the retired British soldier who picked up Reacher, explains that his boss is in need of Reacher’s special brand of assistance. Reacher’s cop instincts make him a natural at observing things most people don’t see.
Gregory’s boss, Edward Lane – also like Reacher, a former military officer – explains that a car with OSC plates that Reacher took note of the night before had been stolen, and possibly was involved in a kidnapping. The victims were Lane’s wife, Kate, and stepdaughter, Jade.
Reacher agrees to help the men find the kidnap victims, but along the way he learns that the men whom he is helping are even edgier and more capable of violence than he is. Lane’s company consists of former Navy SEALs, Delta Force soldiers and British SAS: men trained to kill.
When Reacher learns that Kate is Lane’s second wife and that [/TEXT_RR][TEXT_RR]the ex-colonel’s first wife had also been kidnapped, he knows nothing is as it first seemed. He also learns that Kate’s sister, because of her own suspicions, has kept Lane under constant surveillance.
It isn’t long before Reacher and a former FBI-agent-turned-private-investigator, Lauren Pauling, team up to get to the bottom of both mysterious kidnappings. Their increasingly hazardous investigation takes them “across the pond” to England and one of the wildest denouements of any in the Reacher thriller series.
Fans who were worried that Child might be reigning in the action after all of the procedural detail in the past two outings will find themselves hanging onto their armchairs for dear life as the [/TEXT_RR][TEXT_RR]action and pace of “The Hard Way” threaten to sweep them out of the safety of their houses.
And the imperfections Child adds to his protagonist’s character this time out, such as Reacher’s not catching onto all of the questionable dealings early on in the novel, give Reacher a much-needed vulnerability.
All in all, “The Hard Way” is a breathless, well-paced thriller that will satisfy die-hard fans and newcomers. If Child keeps investing his series with this sort of energy, it’s hard to imagine it running out of steam anytime soon.
Kansas City freelancer Dorman T. Shindler is also the editor of “The Best of Philip Jose Farmer.”
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THE HARD WAY
By Lee Child
Bantam, 320 pages, $24
The Reacher novels:
“Killing Floor” (1997)
“Die Trying” (1998)
“Tripwire” (1999)
“Running Blind” (2000)
“Echo Burning” (2001)
“Without Fail” (2002)
“Persuader” (2003)
“The Enemy” (2004)
“One Shot” (2005)
