Make me A Jack Reacher novel

Review by New York Times Review

COVER YOUR EYES - this one's really nasty. Not even cookie-baking moms and their innocent children are spared in THE KILLING LESSONS (St. Martin's, $25.99), Saul Black's thriller about an interstate manhunt for a killer whose modus operandi is so bizarre even his own accomplice can't figure it out. Xander King and his browbeaten sidekick, Paulie Stokes, have been doing their filthy business for the past three years, abducting women in one state and usually leaving their mutilated remains in another. The death count is up to seven and climbing, according to Valerie Hart, the San Francisco cop who's lead detective on the case. But by the time the killers make their way to the isolated farmhouse in Colorado where Rowena Cooper and her two children live, Xander is starting to unravel. He's unable to complete his peculiar ritual of leaving a foreign object in each victim, and although he doesn't realize it, Rowena's 10-year-old daughter has escaped. Despite the almost shockingly good writing, it's too easy to pick the book apart. For one thing, it feels researched, which wasn't the case when this British author, writing under his real name, Glen Duncan, produced a stylish horror novel called "The Last Werewolf." It's fun to spot a sly acknowledgment of one obvious reference work, "The Silence of the Lambs," embedded in the story. But the alcoholic, obsessive, self-destructive detective is no less a cliché because she's a woman, and the graphic brutality directed at women who bear no resemblance to the maternal figure who made a monster of Xander evokes torture scenes straight out of "Criminal Minds." And while Valerie's detective skills are impressive (watch for the witty thought process that takes her from Christmas shopping to Russell Crowe to the true identity of Xander King), you still have to wonder why the F.B.I. isn't all over a case of interstate kidnapping. But even when the plot goes into melodramatic overdrive, it's impossible not to be swept away by its propulsive momentum. The appeal of this dark and intensely disquieting book isn't entirely visceral either. By shifting the narrative point of view, Black allows us to peer into the depths of his many richly developed characters, from the surprisingly complex killers and their dedicated hunters to the supporting players who pop up only to be ruthlessly disposed of. AFTER KNOCKING AROUND Europe in his last book, Lee Child's wide-bodied hero, Jack Reacher, is back where he belongs in MAKE ME (Delacorte, $28.99), bumming around the country and checking out the infinite weirdness of the American heartland. There's a lot of weird going on in Mother's Rest, the intriguingly named agricultural town that greets Reacher when he obeys a directive from what he calls his "lizard brain" and hops off a train in the middle of nowhere. Everyone from the motel clerk to the counterman at the diner immediately takes Reacher for someone else - possibly a colleague of Michelle Chang, a former F.B.I. operative who's in town looking for a missing colleague - and a neighborhood watch is set up to keep an eye on both of them. This would be comical, if it weren't so sinister; but Child has always been sensitive to the air of menace clinging to lonesome towns on railway lines that only run from here to there, dropping off travelers who promptly disappear. Once the obligatory out-of-town action scenes are out of the way and Reacher comes up for air from his steamy affair with Chang, the story returns to Mother's Rest to expose the unspeakably creepy things that go on in the small towns you see when you look out the window of the speeding train that's taking you away from all that. DONALD SMITH'S exceptional first novel, THE CONSTABLE'S TALE (Pegasus, $25.95), is a revelatory look at colonial America, as seen through the eyes of a volunteer constable in North Carolina. Harry Woodyard is a man of strong principles, some acquired by observing the "Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour." Rule No. 110 - "Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire Called Conscience" - serves Harry well when the Campbell family is murdered. An old Indian named Comet Elijah, found camping in the woods, is jailed for the massacre, and given the prejudices of the Indian-hating sheriff, Harry is the old man's only hope. In unmasking a villain, the investigation also provides insights into the surprisingly worldly ways of our colonial ancestors. THE BEST AMATEUR sleuths are often social misfits like Patrick Fort, the appealing hero of Belinda Bauer's deliciously macabre mystery, RUBBERNECKER (Atlantic Monthly, $24). Though Patrick has Asperger's syndrome, the results of his biology and zoology exams are off the chart, winning him a place at Cardiff University. Despite having zero social skills, Patrick is a whiz in the anatomy lab, so far ahead of his class that he alone realizes the cadaver on his dissection table didn't die of natural causes. In a parallel narrative sizzling with tension, Sam Galen, a fully conscious but paralyzed patient in a coma ward, silently rages at his inability to tell anyone that he's seen another patient being murdered. In a tour de force of plotting and writing, Bauer not only establishes a bond between Patrick and Sam but renders their separate voices with beauty and compassion.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2015]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Just when you think the newer fellas, like Patrick Lee, are gaining on Child in the adrenaline-driven-thriller sweepstakes, the reigning champ ups the ante. It starts with an idle question: Why would a nothing town, in the middle of endless Oklahoma wheat fields, be named Mother's Rest? Being a curious guy, Jack Reacher gets off a Chicago-bound train to find out. No one seems to know the answer, but the locals, an odd sort who appear to have walked off the set of Bad Day at Black Rock, get a little twitchy when Reacher approaches them. Then he encounters an intriguing woman named Chang, a former FBI agent turned PI, who is trying to find her partner. Reacher joins forces with her, and so begins another Childean rampage across the country the partner's trail takes them to Phoenix, Chicago, San Francisco, and back to wheat country with the pair pursued by all manner of roughnecks, some cornpone, some polished, but all potentially lethal. Yes, there's breakneck action, but what gives this one its zing is the multilayered plot, which probes the nefarious digital doings on the Deep Web to uncover, well, something very, very bad indeed. (It starts online, but it ends up with backhoes and feral hogs.) The beguiling Chang offers a new treat for series fans as well, and a surprise at the end will keep readers short of breath until the next installment begins, which will at least give the pretenders to Child's throne a little time to regroup. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The Reacher novels typically debut number one on the The New York Times best-seller list. End of story.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2015 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Bestseller Child's superb 20th Jack Reacher novel (after 2014's Personal) begins with the disposal of the body of someone named Keever, with a backhoe in a hog pen near an almost-forgotten town in the Midwest called Mother's Rest, which Reacher decides to visit (as he points out, he has "no place to go, and all the time in the world to get there"). The mystery deepens dramatically after he meets Michelle Chang, who's looking for her PI colleague: Keever. Reacher and Chang make a formidable team faced with a formidable challenge: finding out what happened to Keever, the only clue a cryptic note that reads "200 deaths." The investigation takes the two from Mother's Rest to Chicago, Arizona, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley-and to the Internet's netherworld, the "Deep Web." What they discover is beyond gruesome and almost beyond belief-it's decidedly not for the faint of heart-but Child's complete command of the story makes this thriller work brilliantly. Agent: Darley Anderson, Darley Anderson Literary. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Near midnight, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a toothbrush in his shirt pocket, Jack Reacher steps off the train in Mother's Rest, OK, looking to discover the origin of the town's name. Private investigator and former FBI agent Michelle Chang emerges from the shadows at the small depot, mistaking Reacher for her partner Keever, for whom she has been searching. After meeting over breakfast at the town's diner, Reacher and Chang partner up to find Keever, but they soon discover there is something truly nasty going on in Mother's Rest. The multilayered plot, involving an investigation of the Deep Web with the help of an LA Times science editor, ultimately places the intrepid duo on a hog farm fighting the bad guys with only a backhoe for transportation. Is there real romance in Reacher's future? Only the next installment in the series will tell. Verdict Superbly plotted with a jolt a minute and a touch of Carl Hiaasen-style weirdness, this thriller will delight longtime fans. It also serves as a great introduction for readers new to the series. [A September 2015 LibraryReads pick; Entertainment Weekly reports that Paramount will release the sequel to Jack Reacher, the first film adaptation of Child's books and starring Tom Cruise, on October 21, 2016.-Ed.]-Vicki Gregory, Sch. of Information, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

In this 20th installment of Child's action series (Personal, 2014, etc.), Jack Reacher ends up in the wrong place at the wrong timeperfectly positioning him to unravel a missing person mystery and save the day. Living on the road with his toothbrush in his pocket, ex-military policeman/all-around-hero Reacher is wending his way across the country by train when he alights at Mother's Rest on a whim, curious about the origin of the name. Instead of the expected historical marker, he finds a bunch of unfriendly townspeople and ex-FBI agent/PI Michelle Chang, who's searching for a missing colleague. Drawn irrevocably to both Chang and the mystery, Reacher fights to uncover the truth behind Mother's Resta truth that involves the so-called "Deep Web," the dark undercover space of the Internet. Reacher and Chang traverse the country from Oklahoma to Chicago, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in their quest for answers. The final showdown reveals that the crimes of Mother's Rest are more sinister and terrible than they ever imagined. Despite (or maybe because of) the expected Reacher-novel formula, this series remains as compulsively readable as ever. Child is a master of pacing, stretching out the mystery through short chapters that give rise to bursts of well-choreographed violence. Sentences are choppy, dialogue is fast, yet there is authenticity to Reacher's world, too. While the mystery is rather shallowly sketched in between the fight sequences, the setting is effectively bland, and the ending makes one feel true horror at the ways of men. Of course, the biggest strength is Reacher himself: impassive, analytical, secretly romantic, and relentlessly honorable. It's impossible not to root for him and his lady friend of the momentand Chang, to be fair, is tough, if not multidimensional. Jack Reacher is still going strong. Will satisfy fansand newcomers, too. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter 1 Moving a guy as big as Keever wasn't easy. It was like trying to wrestle a king-­size mattress off a waterbed. So they buried him close to the house. Which made sense anyway. The harvest was still a month away, and a disturbance in a field would show up from the air. And they would use the air, for a guy like Keever. They would use search planes, and helicopters, and maybe even drones. They started at midnight, which they thought was safe enough. They were in the middle of ten thousand acres of nothingness, and the only man-­made structure their side of any horizon was the railroad track to the east, but midnight was five hours after the evening train and seven hours before the morning train. Therefore, no prying eyes. Their backhoe had four spotlights on a bar above the cab, the same way kids pimped their pick-­up trucks, and together the four beams made a wide pool of halogen brightness. Therefore, visibility was not a problem either. They started the hole in the hog pen, which was a permanent disturbance all by itself. Each hog weighed two hundred pounds, and each hog had four feet. The dirt was always chewed up. Nothing to see from the air, not even with a thermal camera. The picture would white out instantly, from the steaming animals themselves, and their steaming piles and pools of waste. Safe enough. Hogs were rooting animals, so they made sure the hole was deep. Which was not a problem either. Their backhoe's arm was long, and it bit rhythmically, in fluent articulated seven-­foot scoops, the hydraulic rams glinting in the electric light, the engine straining and roaring and pausing, the cab falling and rising, as each bucket-­load was dumped aside. When the hole was done they backed the machine up and turned it around and used the front bucket to push Keever into his grave, scraping him, rolling him, covering his body with dirt, until finally it fell over the lip and thumped down into the electric shadows. Only one thing went wrong, and it happened right then. The evening train came through five hours late. The next morning they heard on the AM station that a broken locomotive had caused a jam a hundred miles south. But they didn't know that at the time. All they heard was the mournful whistle at the distant crossing, and then all they could do was turn and stare, at the long lit cars rumbling past in the middle distance, one after the other, like a vision in a dream, seemingly forever. But eventually the train was gone, and the rails sang for a minute more, and then the tail light was swallowed by the midnight darkness, and they turned back to their task. Twenty miles north the train slowed, and slowed, and then eased to a hissing stop, and the doors sucked open, and Jack Reacher stepped down to a concrete ramp in front of a grain elevator as big as an apartment house. To his left were four more elevators, all of them bigger than the first, and to his right was an enormous metal shed the size of an airplane hangar. There were vapor lights on poles, set at regular intervals, and they cut cones of yellow in the darkness. There was mist in the nighttime air, like a note on a calendar. The end of summer was coming. Fall was on its way. Reacher stood still and behind him the train moved away without him, straining, grinding, settling to a slow rat-­a-­tat rhythm, and then accelerating, its building slipstream pulling at his clothes. He was the only passenger who had gotten out. Which was not surprising. The place was no kind of a commuter hub. It was all agricultural. What token passenger facilities it had were wedged between the last elevator and the huge shed, and were limited to a compact building, which seemed to have both a ticket window and benches for waiting. It was built in a traditional railroad style, and it looked like a child's toy, temporarily set down between two shiny oil drums. But on a sign board running its whole length was written the reason Reacher was there: Mother's Rest. Which he had seen on a map, and which he thought was a great name for a railroad stop. He figured the line must cross an ancient wagon train trail, right there, where something had happened long ago. Maybe a young pregnant woman went into labor. The jostling could not have helped. Maybe the wagon train stopped for a couple of weeks. Or a month. Maybe someone remembered the place years later. A descendant, perhaps. A family legend. Maybe there was a one-­room museum. Or perhaps there was a sadder interpretation. Maybe they had buried a woman there. Too old to make it. In which case there would be a commemorative stone. Either way Reacher figured he might as well find out. He had no place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, so detours cost him nothing. Which is why he got out of the train. To a sense of disappointment, initially. His expectations had been way off base. He had pictured a couple of dusty houses, and a lonely one-­horse corral. And the one-­room museum, maybe run part-­time and volunteer by an old guy from one of the houses. Or the headstone, maybe marble, behind a square wrought-­iron fence. He had not expected the immense agricultural infrastructure. He should have, he supposed. Grain, meet the railroad. It had to be loaded somewhere. Billions of bushels and millions of tons each year. He stepped left and looked through a gap between structures. The view was dark, but he could sense a rough semicircle of habitation. Houses, obviously, for the depot workers. He could see lights, which he hoped were a motel, or a diner, or both. He walked to the exit, skirting the pools of vapor light purely out of habit, but he saw that the last lamp was unavoidable, because it was set directly above the exit gate. So he saved himself a further perimeter diversion by walking through the next-­to-­last pool of light, too. At which point a woman stepped out of the shadows. She came toward him with a distinctive burst of energy, two fast paces, eager, like she was pleased to see him. Her body language was all about relief. Then it wasn't. Then it was all about disappointment. She stopped dead, and she said, "Oh." She was Asian. But not petite. Five-­nine, maybe, or even five-­ ten. And built to match. Not a bone in sight. No kind of a willowy waif. She was about forty, Reacher guessed, with black hair worn long, jeans and a T-­shirt under a short cotton coat. She had lace-­up shoes on her feet. He said, "Good evening, ma'am." She was looking past his shoulder. He said, "I'm the only passenger." She looked him in the eye. He said, "No one else got out of the train. So I guess your friend isn't coming." "My friend?" she said. A neutral kind of accent. Regular American. The kind he heard everywhere. He said, "Why else would a person be here, except to meet the train? No point in coming otherwise. I guess normally there would be nothing to see at midnight." She didn't answer. He said, "Don't tell me you've been waiting here since seven o'clock." "I didn't know the train was late," she said. "There's no cell signal here. And no one from the railroad, to tell you anything. And I guess the Pony Express is out sick today." "He wasn't in my car. Or the next two, either." "Who wasn't?" "Your friend." "You don't know what he looks like." "He's a big guy," Reacher said. "That's why you jumped out when you saw me. You thought I was him. For a second, anyway. And there were no big guys in my car. Or the next two." "When is the next train?" "Seven in the morning." She said, "Who are you and why have you come here?" "I'm just a guy passing through." "The train passed through. Not you. You got out." "You know anything about this place?" "Not a thing." "Have you seen a museum or a gravestone?" "Why are you here?" "Who's asking?" She paused a beat, and said, "Nobody." Reacher said, "Is there a motel in town?" "I'm staying there." "How is it?" "It's a motel." "Works for me," Reacher said. "Does it have vacancies?" "I'd be amazed if it didn't." "OK, you can show me the way. Don't wait here all night. I'll be up by first light. I'll knock on your door as I leave. Hopefully your friend will be here in the morning." The woman said nothing. She just glanced at the silent rails one more time, and then turned around and led the way through the exit gate. Excerpted from Make Me by Lee Child All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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