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Persuader: A Jack Reacher Novel

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Overview

Jack Reacher.The ultimate loner.An elite ex-military cop who left the service years ago, he's moved from place to place...without family...without possessions...without commitments.

Editorial Reviews

The promo copy on the ARC of Child's new thriller proclaims, "We dare to make this claim: Lee Child is the best thriller writer you're probably not reading-yet." Hopefully the "six-figure" marketing campaign promised by Child's new publisher will make that statement obsolete, because readers will be hard-pressed to find a more engaging thriller this spring season. Child is a master of storytelling skills, not least the plot twist, and the opening chapter of this novel spins a doozy, as a high-octane, extremely violent action sequence sees Child hero Jack Reacher rescue a young man, 20-year-old Richard Beck, from an attempted kidnapping before the rug is pulled out from under the reader with the chapter's last line. The rest of the novel centers on the Beck family's isolated, heavily guarded estate on the Maine coast where Reacher takes Richard. Richard's father is suspected by Feds of being a major drug dealer and the kidnapper of another Fed, and also seems to have ties to a fiend who killed Reacher's lady 10 years before, someone Reacher thought he'd killed in turn, in a vengeance slaying. Tension runs high, then extremely high, as Reacher, ingratiating himself with the dealer and hired on as a bodyguard, pokes around the estate, looking for the kidnapped Fed and evading and/or disposing of in-house bad guys as they begin to suspect he's not who he seems. But then little in Child's novels is as it at first seems, and numerous further plot twists spark the story line. What makes the novel really zing, though, is Reacher's narration-a unique mix of the brainy and the brutal, of strategic thinking and explosive action, moral rumination and ruthless force, marking him as one of the most memorable heroes in contemporary thrillerdom. Any thriller fan who has yet to read Lee Child should start now. (May 13) Forecast: The publisher is aiming at Father's Day sales, and with the help of a massive campaign, including print, radio and airline advertising, Child could be poised to reap the sort of sales he deserves. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Lee Child

Lee Child was born in Coventry, England, in 1954, early enough to remember playing on left-over World War II bomb rubble, late enough to be young and impressionable through the Sixties. He went to law school, but took a job in commercial television. "I always loved entertainment," he says. "At elementary school, I was always in the school plays. As a teenager, I worked in shoestring theaters and arts centers. I took vacation jobs anywhere there was a stage and an audience. I never intended to practice law. I did the degree because it was an interesting subject." He joined Granada Television in Manchester, England, thinking the job would last a few months. He ended up staying nearly twenty years. He was there through the great era of British television drama, working on flagship shows like Brideshead Revisited, Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. "That was a wonderful, wonderful job," he says. "But eventually, twenty years is enough for anybody. And television is teamwork--I felt I wanted to get away from that and get closer to the audience, personally." So he made the decision to become a novelist. "I figured the novel is the purest form of entertainment, and certainly the closest I'd ever get to an audience...after all, a writer is literally one-on-one with the reader for hours and hours at a time."

Customer Reviews

  • 5 stars out of 5awsome

    Posted March 30, 2009 by randall, northshore,IL

    Great reads. quick and exciting. Jack is a great character.

  • 5 stars out of 5Great read

    Posted April 21, 2009 by Pat, Syracuse NY

    pulls you in right from the get go and keeps on going-a real page turner

  • 5 stars out of 5Great read!

    Posted May 23, 2009 by Kate, MI

    I just discovered Lee Child and his Reacher novels and I plan to read them all. Persuader was a fast, suspenseful, thrilling read.

  • 5 stars out of 5It's a Keeper!

    Posted June 09, 2009 by Read Her, Ft Lauderdale

    I really liked this book. It's got everything - a great plot, intrigue, action, a cool location, some 'romance', you learn a thing or two about covert activities ... and you've got Reacher. As far as characters go, he's got it all. My favorite line: 'I said nothing.' Talk about your poker face!
    Get it. Read it. Love it.

  • 5 stars out of 5Surprising good!!!

    Posted June 29, 2009 by Michael, Utah

    I say "surprising good" because I just stumbled on this book, have a few minute to kill, and started reading it. I was sucked in immediately and couldn't put it down. I will look for other works by Lee Child.

Additional Info

Imprint

Delacorte Press

Filesize

748.88 KB

Number of Pages

496

eBook ISBN

9780440333869

Excerpt from: Persuader by Lee Child

The cop climbed out of his car exactly four minutes before he got shot. He moved like he knew his fate in advance. He pushed the door against the resistance of a stiff hinge and swiveled slowly on the worn vinyl seat and planted both feet flat on the road. Then he grasped the door frame with both hands and heaved himself up and out. He stood in the cold clear air for a second and then turned and pushed the door shut again behind him. Held still for a second longer. Then he stepped forward and leaned against the side of the hood up near the headlight.

The car was a seven-year-old Chevy Caprice. It was black and had no police markings. But it had three radio antennas and plain chrome hubs. Most cops you talk to swear the Caprice is the best police vehicle ever built. This guy looked like he agreed with them. He looked like a veteran plain-clothes detective with the whole of the motor pool at his disposal. Like he drove the ancient Chevy because he wanted to. Like he wasn't interested in the new Fords. I could see that kind of stubborn old-timer personality in the way he held himself. He was wide and bulky in a plain dark suit made from some kind of heavy wool. He was tall but stooped. An old man. He turned his head and looked north and south along the road and then craned his thick neck to glance back over his shoulder at the college gate. He was thirty yards away from me.

The college gate itself was purely a ceremonial thing. Two tall brick pillars just rose up from a long expanse of tended lawn behind the sidewalk. Connecting the pillars was a high double gate made from iron bars bent and folded and twisted into fancy shapes. It was shiny black. It looked like it had just been repainted. It was probably repainted after every winter. It had no security function. Anybody who wanted to avoid it could drive straight across the lawn. It was wide open, anyway. There was a driveway behind it with little knee-high iron posts set eight feet back on either side. They had latches. Each half of the gate was latched into one of them. Wide open. The driveway led on down to a huddle of mellow brick buildings about a hundred yards away. The buildings had steep mossy roofs and were overhung by trees. The driveway was lined with trees. The sidewalk was lined with trees. There were trees everywhere. Their leaves were just about coming in. They were tiny and curled and bright green. Six months from now they would be big and red and golden and photographers would be swarming all over the place taking pictures of them for the college brochure.

Twenty yards beyond the cop and his car and the gate was a pickup truck parked on the other side of the road. It was tight against the curb. It was facing toward me, fifty yards away. It looked a little out of place. It was faded red and had a big bull bar on the front. The bar was dull black and looked like it had been bent and straightened a couple of times. There were two men in the cab. They were young, tall, clean-cut, fair-haired. They were just sitting there, completely still, gazing forward, looking at nothing in particular. They weren't looking at the cop. They weren't looking at me.