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.

Never Go Back, by Lee Child

I didn't know anything about Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels until I saw Jack Reacher, the recent movie starring Tom Cruise as Reacher.  The movie, based on the novel One Shot, captivated me and put me in search of Child's novels.  His latest, Never Go Back, lived up to the movie version of Reacher (although, of course, you would have to say the movie Reacher lived up the Reacher of the novels).  He's smart, aloof, marches to his own drumbeat, and has a knack for figuring out what is eluding others.

In Never Go Back, Reacher, an ex-MP who lives as an anonymous drifter, travels across the country back to the MP station where he had been commanding officer.  There he finds himself mired in a mess, having to defend himself from old, questionable charges, and helping the current CO out of her similar mess.  True to Reacher, he has to prove that everyone else is wrong, and in doing so, knocks a bunch of heads together, breaks a bunch of laws, and ticks a bunch of people off.

Never God Back is all about the chase.  Military authorities, shadowy maybe-military dudes, meth-producing hicks, and others are trying to track him down, beat him up, or put him in jail.  He, of course, outsmarts them all.  The problem is, his reason for going back to the MP post, and the reason all these people have framed him and are chasing him down, is first of all unclear and unconvincing.  In the end the revelation and resolution were yawn-inducing.  Oh, that's what they're trying to cover up; big deal, I thought.

It seems odd to say, but the telling of the story makes up for much of the start and finish.  I thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience, even though I was disappointed in some of the substance.  I will probably pick up more of Child's Reacher novels, to listen to on my commute if nothing else, and I certainly would look forward to more Reacher movies.

Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!