Review Wednesday: The Hard Way

I always enjoy Lee Child’s Reacher novels. Hubs and I often listen to them while on the road. Eight hours of driving flies by when you’re fighting your way across the USA, or in the case of The Hard Way, the USA and England.

I particularly enjoyed the theme of this story, and the way Child dribbled tiny innocuous clues throughout and then cobbled them together in Reacher’s penultimate realization which led to the ultimate showdown. I liked the characters, too, the way Lee brought to life the various sisters, their loyalty, their willingness to fight for and defend those they love; they way he raises women up and reveals qualities that some might criticize as weakness–compassion, and denial (refusal to accept no as answer)–as strengths worthy of celebrating. Lee usually does a good job of portraying strong female characters, and this story is bang on.

If you like action novels and or movies, chances are you’ll like this book. Caution: it’s not for the squeamish; a couple passages of description of the realities of war is a bit brutal.

5 stars.

Deborah

The last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

~Viktor Frankl

Official Synopsis from: Lee Child website :

Jack Reacher was alone, the way he liked it, soaking up the hot, electric New York City night, watching a man cross the street to a parked Mercedes and drive it away. The car contained one million dollars in ransom money. Edward Lane, the man who paid it, will pay even more to get his family back. Lane runs a highly illegal soldiers-for-hire operation. He will use any amount of money and any tool to find his beautiful wife and child. Then he’ll turn Jack Reacher loose with a vengeance—because Reacher is the best man hunter in the world.

On the trail of a vicious kidnapper, Reacher is learning the chilling secrets of his employer’s past…and of a horrific drama in the heart of a nasty little war. He’s beginning to realize that Edward Lane is hiding something. Something dirty. Something big. But Reacher also knows this: he’s already in way too deep to stop now.

The only way to find the truth, as they used to say back in the service, is to do it the hard way. So Reacher starts over at square one. He sweats the details and works the clues. What started in NYC explodes three thousand miles away in the sleepy English countryside with Reacher striding alone in the shadows, armed and dangerous, and invincible.



Lee Child was born and raised in England. He studied law and ended up working in television until he was fired at age forty, victim of a corporate reorg. He then sat down and wrote his first novel, Killing Floor, and the rest, as they say, is history. Find out more about Lee Child on his website:

www.leechild.com

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