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Friday, November 1, 2013

Die Trying, by Lee Child

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Jack Reacher just happens to be in Chicago and runs into an FBI agent just as she is snatched off the street by some mysterious bad guys.  She's the target of the kidnapping.  Besides being an FBI agent, she also happens to be the daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces.
Talk about being in the right place at the right time.  Jack Reacher is kidnapped along with an FBI agent, and as a result, infiltrates a radical militia group and saves the day, thwarting the plans of the insane militia leader.  If you know Jack Reacher, you know that he overcomes impossible odds, outwits the cleverest foes, shoots like the best marksmen, and manages to hook up with the most beautiful women.  So it won't surprise you that he does all that in more in Die Trying.

Even after reading only two Jack Reacher books and seeing the movie Jack Reacher, I am coming to see Lee Child's formula.  But just because something is formulaic doesn't mean it doesn't work.  Child puts together a somewhat implausible plot with Reacher's quite expertise and determination to create a page-turner.  The action is well-written, with lots of technical and strategic detail.  The Montana Militia theme seems sort of dated, even though this was just published in 1998.  Are those guys still around?  And does Child unfairly depict them as sociopathic megalomaniacs?  Well, it is fiction after all.

Pick up Die Trying, or any Reacher novel for that matter, for a fun-to-read, action packed tough guy novel.  A guaranteed testosterone boost.





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