'A Wanted Man' Gets You In Its Grasp -- Book Review

Book Review

A Wanted Man
a Jack Reacher novel
by Lee Child
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A Wanted Man isn’t a great book.

It’s certainly quite far from being fine literature and I can’t really say that the story is truly compelling.

I wouldn’t even call it a first-class thriller, even in the not always exalted realm of page turners. There was a twist midway through that I thought was rather suspect, and the outcome isn’t particularly surprising (especially for anyone who’s read any of Lee Child’s novels revolving around Jack Reacher).

But it is a great read.

Before having my crack at a reserve copy from the Skokie Public Library, I was surprised at how many scathing user reviews I was seeing on Amazon, with several 1-star slams coming from readers claiming to have been longtime fans of the Reacher series.

If such reviews came from legitimately dismayed Reacher Creatures, I don’t understand what they were expecting nor why they were so grievously disappointed. Having read all 16 of Lee Child’s previous thrillers featuring Jack Reacher, an ex-military policeman turned nomadic superhero-of-sorts, sure, some are a bit better than others. And though I’d be hard pressed to recall any specifics of the previous books, all devoured well within a week, I don’t think I’d put A Wanted Man in the very upper echelon.

But at the very least, it accomplished what Child’s past works—like those by my other favorite thriller writer of recent years, Harlan Coben—have: it made me want to read it at any moment I had time to spare.

One night, rather than go out to a play I was thinking of seeing, I opted to stay in and read A Wanted Man. Likewise on other evenings, instead of watching a DVD that was due back to the library the next day or paying close attention to a baseball playoff game, I chose to read the book because I acutely wanted to find out what would happen next and how it would end.

I can’t say I learned a whole lot, although through Reacher, Child always includes some interesting societal insights, trivial tidbits and an occasional mindbender (such as how you can easily speak for a full minute while knowingly not saying a word that includes the letter “a”).

And though I could provide a minor synopsis of the plot, it doesn’t really matter except to say that A Wanted Man finds Reacher hitchhiking through the Plains states and getting entwined in some nefarious doings for which he has to come to the rescue.

 As I mentioned above, Child employs a twist about halfway through that seemingly comes out of nowhere, but it doesn’t really derail things so much as to simplify them.

At this point, all of Child’s books go straight to #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and A Wanted Man is no exception. But the series is primed to get even more exposure when the first film adaptation, titled Jack Reacher and starring Tom Cruise in the title role (despite Reacher being 6’5" on paper), is released near Christmas.

The movie is based on 2005’s One Shot; that’s a really good one (as my friend Dave recently confirmed) and it’s not as if the Reacher series needs to be read in order. So while, IMHO, there’s no reason to avoid A Wanted Man if you’re a fan of the Jack Reacher series, if you can’t get it at your library and/or prefer waiting for the paperback, start with One Shot, or Killing Floor (the first book to be released) or The Affair (the book preceding A Wanted Man, now in paperback and set earlier than any previous Reacher story).

But if you are a Reacher devotee, puzzled perhaps by the plethora of poor reviews on Amazon, I say ignore them. It may not be a masterpiece, it may not be a great book, but in library parlance, A Wanted Man is well-worth checking out.

Newest Reacher Novel an Empty Thrill Ride; Lisa Gardner Cop Combo Satisfies

Book Review (other books reviewed below in same post)

61 Hours: A Reacher Novel
by Lee Child
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Lee Child is my second favorite author of what I'll call "fast fiction," meaning mysteries, suspense novels and other books that are enjoyable page turners rather than great literature. But fast fiction is my favorite type of reading and behind only Harlan Coben, I'll put Lee Child's output--all featuring the main character of Jack Reacher--above John Grisham, Dan Brown, Carl Hiaassen as my silver medalist in this category.

Having read all 14 of Child's Reacher stories, I know that I liked some better than others, but can't recall specifics that readily distinguish one from another. None took more than a few days to read, so I would heartily recommend any of them if you need a great quick read on an airplane, beach, etc.

Given that the latest, 61 Hours is still in hardcover, is far from the best book of the Reacher series and ends in a cliffhanger to be continued in Worth Dying For (due out in October), I would not recommend that this is the one you start with, especially if you can't get it from your local library just yet (I waited about 3 months on the Reserve List at the Skokie Public Library).

Still, as Jack Reacher is a good bit like another mortal superhero named Jack, that being Mr. Bauer of TV's '24,'--about which I said that even at its worst it never made me not want to watch--I would say that if you have read and liked other Lee Child's books, there is no need to pointedly avoid 61 Hours. The action moves fast and you find yourself wanting to see what happens next. It definitely counts as a decent thriller.

But even in comparison with other Reacher novels, or even fast fiction in general, the plot line,  characterizations and twists in this one seem particularly slight and subpar, as the nomadic Reacher happens to land in a small South Dakota town that has a secret meth lab run by a Mexican drug lord. As far-fetched as this setup might sound, it's not the problem so much as the fact that I had one of the main wrongdoers pegged about 200 pages before the supposedly super-keen Reacher and kept waiting for the obvious to reveal itself. And while Reacher's typical need to fall in bed with an attractive woman in each book a la James Bond is somewhat frivolous, 61 Hours suffers from the lack of a counterpart for Reacher, except for a long-distance interaction that may develop in the sequel.

So go ahead and read 61 Hours if you already like Child/Reacher, but don't expect it to be awesome, and probably skip it in favor of any of the first 10 works in the series if you don't yet know Jack.

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Book Reviews

Alone
by Lisa Gardner
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Hide
by Lisa Gardner
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I'd never read anything by Lisa Gardner, who seemingly started as a romance writer but subsequently moved into the thriller space, until I picked up paperback versions of Alone and Hide at the recent Little City Used Book Sale. Originally published in 2005 and 2007, respectively, the two books both feature the same two main crime-fighting characters, though Hide works as a sequel to Alone more so due to the crimes depicted and similarities of the victims involved.

Both books worked well as satisfying suspense thrillers, with Alone being a bit more engaging throughout--as state trooper Bobby Dodge struggles to prove, not in the least to himself, that he was justified in killing the supposedly abusive husband of a beautiful woman with a tortured past. But though Hide was slower to get rolling, its twists in the end made it just as good if not better, as Dodge and detective D.D. Warren are on the trail of a serial killer who may or may not be connected to events that surfaced in Alone.

A bit strangely, while I felt that the two Gardner books were of higher quality than the latest by Child, I still look forward to reading the next Reacher installment much more so than another book by Gardner. But if you're looking for something to pass the time, you won't go wrong with Alone and Hide.