Tough Guy at the Border of Hope and Despair Leaves turn. Snow falls. Robins tweet. And a new Jack Reacher novel arrives as the year’s first red-hot beach book. Truly, this is how some of us keep track of the seasons.
NOTHING TO LOSE
By Lee Child
407 pp. Delacorte Press. $27.
By Lee Child
407 pp. Delacorte Press. $27.
(In NZ Bantam Press $37)
That’s because Lee Child’s brainiac tough-guy series has been on a steady winning streak, a pattern that began three books back with “One Shot” and continues through the latest installment, “Nothing to Lose.” The success of these books rests partly on the big, hulking shoulders of their charismatic hero, but also on Mr. Child’s great love of gamesmanship. Each book involves a series of challenges for Reacher’s formidable powers of deduction. Each throws down a challenge to Mr. Child, too.
After all, where does this brilliantly calculating author go from here? Reacher’s minimalist character is perfect. His moods don’t waver. His baggage stays light. His biography needs no amplifying. His adventures follow a familiar, satisfying arc. None of this is broken, so it doesn’t need fixing. So how does Mr. Child stick to these books’ basic blueprint while still making each year’s model so satisfyingly new?
His solution in “Nothing to Lose” is this: keep the format inviolate but raise the ante tremendously. Thus “Nothing to Lose” begins (after a brief, alarmingly un-Reacher-like prologue, which will make sense only hundreds of pages later) with a line across a road. The line is an inchwide barrier separating two Colorado towns. When Reacher ambles past it, he notices that the pavement on one side is nothing like the pavement on the other. This discrepancy is Mr. Child’s opening teaser. How big can the importance of such a small point get?
After all, where does this brilliantly calculating author go from here? Reacher’s minimalist character is perfect. His moods don’t waver. His baggage stays light. His biography needs no amplifying. His adventures follow a familiar, satisfying arc. None of this is broken, so it doesn’t need fixing. So how does Mr. Child stick to these books’ basic blueprint while still making each year’s model so satisfyingly new?
His solution in “Nothing to Lose” is this: keep the format inviolate but raise the ante tremendously. Thus “Nothing to Lose” begins (after a brief, alarmingly un-Reacher-like prologue, which will make sense only hundreds of pages later) with a line across a road. The line is an inchwide barrier separating two Colorado towns. When Reacher ambles past it, he notices that the pavement on one side is nothing like the pavement on the other. This discrepancy is Mr. Child’s opening teaser. How big can the importance of such a small point get?
Bookman Beattie's comments on this book from April here.
1 comment:
Graeme,
I've read every Lee Child/Jack Reacher book and the latest is a long way short of his best. Read the first one first - it's, unlike the rest, written in the first person, and the next half dozen or so are really good.
Cheers
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