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No Child’s Play This

Gone Tomorrow is Lee Child’s latest Jack Reacher thriller: it’s violent, gory and always on the lookout for trouble

The trouble with Lee Child’s hero Jack Reacher is just that ... trouble. It’s his travelling companion, and when it’s not, he longs for it and finds some inexplicable satisfaction cheating death in an extended game. In Gone Tomorrow, Reacher’s on the road again in big, bad New York, and he can’t kick his favourite habit after his deadly tango in his previous adventure, Nothing to Lose. Before that there was Bad Luck and Trouble for this ex-US military man. So, if you get the drift about this drifter, Child’s latest novel is a blast that can last provided you are in the mood for some violent reading.

Reacher’s a quick draw both with his gun and his life because he lugs no baggage around and has no kin or friends to fall back on. He trusts his instincts more than anything else and you like him for it. Soon, you are grinning and bearing it when he tells you he travels with his foldable toothbrush, which, expectedly, is not his formidable weapon of choice.

The man’s not trigger-happy either, but when forced — or shall we say when he steps out into the dark alleys — he likes to cradle a Heckler and Koch sub-machine gun for a shot at glory.

When he’s not shooting, the retired Major is making pleasant conversation with the reader about gaining the high ground in urban combat. “If I can do it, so can you,’’ he seems to suggest in a casual sort of way after cracking a few bones and splattering plenty of blood. He does make you envious at times because he’s a travelling, rambling man in search of a little excitement.

Death first comes calling after a suicide-killing on a New York train. 
Child has a remarkable talent to keep the suspense simple. He connects the action with aplomb using his central character effectively. Reacher’s poise in tight situations of his making is sometimes unnerving and makes you wonder if he is human after all.

Child guides you with ease into the sequences because his star is always there — coaxing, challenging and charging at Al Qaeda operatives led by two women going by the names of Lila and Svetlana Hoth.

A US politician named John Sansom is desperate to keep a memory stick out of the reach of these women, or from anyone else, because there’s a leaked picture of his on it from over 20 years ago when he was a US Special Forces Major leading a covert operation in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

Now, it’s back to haunt him, and Reacher must help him retrieve it because the combined might of the New York Police Department and the FBI are no match for his know-it-all IQ.

The Feds can’t keep a full-blown secret, so you turn to a one-man army who takes the law into his own hands. Combat tactics and weapons of war are Child’s play and make for interesting reading. Guns are second nature for our rugged hero; gadgets can wait, girls can’t, especially if it’s a shapely policewoman.

There are patchy references to Afghanistan of the eighties when the former Soviet Red Army fought the emerging Taleban-Al Qaeda and lost, thanks to a little help from friends like the United States.

The author prefers the mean streets of New York to the hills of Afghanistan in this cause-and-effect tale, a direct fallout of past US policy blunders halfway across the world. Reacher turns Ramboesque in the second half of the grisly adrenalin-pumping action where he ducks, weaves, shoots and slices what’s left of the plot to shreds. Child’s prose flowers when Reacher does what he knows best ... fight. Otherwise it’s passe, especially when the good guy shoots his mouth off to invite some damage to his already stitched up body.

This is a calm, yet chilling thriller which sags a bit in the middle and makes you flip the pages faster than you should before the climax hits you hard. A good read for those with time for trouble on their hands... like Reacher.

allan@khaleejtimes.com

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