Book Review - Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

Synopsis:  New York City. Two in the morning. A subway car heading uptown. Jack Reacher, plus five other passengers. Four are okay. The fifth isn’t.

In the next few tense seconds Reacher will make a choice–and trigger an electrifying chain of events in this gritty, gripping masterwork of suspense by #1 New York Times bestseller Lee Child.

Susan Mark was the fifth passenger. She had a lonely heart, an estranged son, and a big secret. Reacher, working with a woman cop and a host of shadowy feds, wants to know just how big a hole Susan Mark was in, how many lives had already been twisted before hers, and what danger is looming around him now.

Because a race has begun through the streets of Manhattan in a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. Susan Mark’s plain little life was critical to dozens of others in Washington, California, Afghanistan . . . from a former Delta Force operator now running for the U.S. Senate, to a beautiful young woman with a fantastic story to tell–and to a host of others who have just one thing in common: They’re all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or maybe just enough to get him killed.

In a novel that slams through one hairpin surprise after another, Lee Child unleashes a thriller that spans three decades and gnaws at the heart of America . . . and for Jack Reacher, a man who trusts no one and likes it that way, it’s a mystery with only one answer–the kind that comes when you finally get face-to-face and look your worst enemy in the eye.

First Line:  "Suicide bombers are easy to spot."

Random Quote:  "Lila Hoth had been just seven years old when the Soviet Union had fallen apart, so she spoke with a kind of historical detachment.  She had the same kind of distance from former realities that I had from the Jim Crow years in America."

Review:  I love Jack Reacher.  He's a combination superhero and B-movie action hero.  I've been trying to cast him in the movie in my head, but haven't quite managed to get him down.  I'd like to think of him as a big guy, like John Wayne, but more urban tough, like Charles Bronson.

This whole series is built to be incredibly entertaining and a non-stop joyride.  You do not read these for probable outcomes or events or for great literary significance.  You read these because you want good escapism in the form of a really good thriller and these will deliver.

I always manage to learn some odd bit of trivia I didn't know before from these books.  This time is was a bit about the British in Afghanistan that I never put together until now.

Great plotting, superb action, big fun.