Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs. Mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first-timers. Riding the subway in New York at two o'clock in the morning, Reacher knows the twelve giveaway signs to look out for. Watching one of his fellow-passengers, he becomes sharply aware: one by one, she ticks off every bulletpoint on his list. So begins the new heartstopping new thriller starring today's most admired action hero, the gallant and enigmatic loner Jack Reacher.

Wow, this was actually an interesting book. Couldn't put it down, would recommend to thriller lovers.

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Gone tomorrow

Enjoyable action adventure. I wasn't sure I'd like “men's fiction”, I feared it would be mysoginistic pigs with guns but the jack reacher books are written as the “tough guy with the heart of gold”. Does he get a little sex? Sure but he's never a prick about it. I've read another reacher novel that I enjoyed a bit more but this one was a solid “airplane read” – engaging enough to keep me reading for a whole flight without being too mentally taxing.

Rating 3.5

This definitely wasn't my favorite Reacher novel, but I guess after 13 books in the same series, can you really expect every one of them to be fantastic? No, not really. After a while, they get pretty formulaic. In some ways, that may be what the majority of the readers actually want. They want that familiar “feel” of their leading character, and see how they're going to deal with the given scenario.

In that sense, this is a great Jack Reacher novel. All the typical elements are there.

So what's my beef with Gone Tomorrow? It may be me majoring on the minors, but I felt the “set up” was weak. Reacher got in deeper than I think was justifiable for the given situation. And he went farther than I felt was justifiable given that set up. By the end, you feel pretty fine about what goes down, but for 4/5 of the book, the actions of Reacher belie the nobility of the character that has been established throughout the series. While he has the capacity to be a violent character, in the previous dozen books, it's very well established that he's only going to go there when the situation truly deserves it.

In this book, it felt like an unjustified rage rant. Like someone had done something personal to Reacher. Or his family. But the setup isn't personal. If this were a movie, I would strongly suspect that an editor cut some critical material or something. Maybe that's what happened here, as well.

All in all, I felt the author Lee Child took the main character somewhere unjustifiable. I'll read the next book or two fairly carefully as this is a direction that would definitely end the series for me.

What did you think? Am I overreacting here?