▶▶▶ One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9)

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9)

One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9) Review

The world is becoming a smarter place. One piece of evidence is thriller/mystery writing, which is sure better than decades ago. Lee Child is part of that trend, but he may be the leader in the race to stay inside the thriller/mystery genre while still finding ways to be more gripping, with top-rate plot twists and deeper characters. One Shot is as good as any of the Reacher novels, but that's very high praise [Nothing to Lose is the only pretty dumb one].

After saying that, I have to begin by listing the problems with Child and the book. There are the usual problems with Child's writing--sections of 'People say nothing. Not a thing. No way....' If a beautiful woman doesn't love his hero Jack Reacher, she's a villain or a jerk. People lock Reacher up, but he miraculously gets freed just when the plot needs him to. Vast conspiracies always end up a few people short; genius baddies kill other people for asinine reasons but don't kill Reacher when they have great reasons and opportunities to do so. Long ago, Mark Twain mocked the Pathfinder for showing his hero killing a fly with a rifle at 100 yards; Reacher can shoot way better than that with a rifle he has never even tried. He notices nits where other people overlook ostrich eggs, and the nits he picks are always the eggs of deadly monsters. To tell the truth, authors don't need to write thrillers that way, and occasional Reacher novels veer from that pattern. Here, it's as if Child feels pressured to take up the universal cliches, maybe to escape the Oprah Winfrey club.

But Child makes it work. Reacher figures things out at the right pace, with time to move each new puzzle-piece around before fitting it in and finding the next one. He even thinks his fights through before they start--and if he throws punch without strategic consideration, it's a reflex based on vast training and experience. So it's the thoughtful readers [I modestly claim] who are most liable to be drawn in by Child's writing. In this book, Reacher starts out with surplus, clinching reasons for believing that the apparent killer is really guilty. Only because of the villains' overly clever ploys does he, surely but very slowly, gets drawn away from his original prejudice. Two or more of the villains are almost as smart as Reacher--they think things through about as well as him despite some mistakes, and the shock of finding the foes to have outthought him brings on Reacher's most amazing work.

I hope nothing in this review is a spoiler for this book. Like always, you the reader know things will turn out not to be what they seem, but the ride to get past the facade and then, chapters past that, on to the truth is amazing.