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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385340571
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 0385340575
Label: Delacorte Press
Manufacturer: Delacorte Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 432
Publication Date: May 19, 2009
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Release Date: May 19, 2009
Studio: Delacorte Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
Amazon.com Review:
Book Description
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.
Amazon Exclusive Essay: Lee Child on Gone Tomorrow
 My career as a writer has been longer than some and shorter than others, but it happens to span the internet era more or less exactly. My first book, Killing Floor, came out in 1997. It probably sold some copies on Amazon, but not many, because the company was in its infancy then, barely two years old. In that book I even referred to “an e-mail,” thinking I was showing two of the characters to be amazingly cutting-edge and modern.
A year or so later I actually got e-mail, and a year or so after that I got a web site, and a couple of years after that I got broadband, and over the following few years I got into the habit of starting the day internet surfing, reading the news and the gossip.
But it is not until now that I can say that one of my books--the thirteenth Reacher thriller, Gone Tomorrow--is truly and exclusively a product of the internet age.
I started the surfing years in a sensible, structured manner, but I eventually learned that the best stuff comes randomly. I started to follow links on a whim, bouncing from place to place, Googling other people’s references, following the maze, looking for rabbit holes.
I found an anonymous police blog from Britain.
It was apparently hosted by a London copper, and because it was secure and anonymous it was uninhibited. The people who posted there said all kinds of things. There were complaints and there was bitching, of course, but also there was a frank and unexpurgated view of police work from behind the lines. I got there in the summer of 2005, just after the suicide bombings on London’s transportation system, and just after a completely innocent Brazilian student had been shot to death by London police, who were under the mistaken impression that the guy had been involved.
Now, as a thriller writer, I’m familiar with the idea that cops can be bent or reckless. But I’m equally aware that’s mostly literary license. I know lots of cops, and they’re great people doing a very tough job. Years ago I met a friend’s eight-year-old daughter--a sweet little girl with no front teeth--and she grew up to be a cop. She won a bravery medal for a difficult solo arrest during which she was stabbed and had her thumb broken. She’s tough, but she’s not bent or reckless. So are the other cops I know.
So I was curious: what happened with the Brazilian kid? How was the mistake made?
So I eavesdropped while the coppers on the anonymous site were asking the same question. And I learned something interesting.
Their first consensus explanation was: because of “the list.” The Brazilian boy was showing “all twelve signs.” I thought, what list? What signs? So I clicked and scrolled and Googled, and it turned out that years earlier Israeli counterintelligence had developed a failsafe checklist of physical and behavioral signifiers, that when all present and correct mean you are looking at a suicide bomber. The list had entered training manuals, and after 9/11 those manuals were studied like crazy all over the world. And the response was mandatory: you see a guy showing the signs, you put him down, right now, before he can blow himself up.
And by sheer unlucky coincidence, the Brazilian kid had been showing the signs. A winter coat in July, a recent shave, and so on. (Read Gone Tomorrow if you want to know all twelve, and why.)
All writing is what if? So I tried to imagine that moment of... disbelief, I guess. You see a guy showing the signs, and probably every fiber of your being is saying, “This can’t be.” But you’re required to act.
So for the opening scene of Gone Tomorrow, I had Reacher sitting on a subway train in New York City, staring at a woman who is showing the signs. Reacher is ex-military law enforcement, and he knows the list forward and backward. Half of his brain is saying, “This can’t be,” and the other half is programmed to act. What does he do? What if he’s wrong? What will happen?
That’s where the story starts. It ends hundreds of pages later, in a place you both do and don’t expect. --Lee Child
(Photo © Sigrid Estrada)
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
All of the Reacher books are fun to read, but they are more or less the same book, Child just changes the names and places a bit.
Reacher is going to get an improbable call to action.
He's not going to know what a cell phone or DVD is.
There will be a memory stick involved.
You're going to read about what his coffee is like, and what the local geography is like.
Some blood and guts
Gun descriptions
He's going to beat the bad guys through shear logic.
He's going to sleep with a woman detective in a one page Wham Bam, Thank you Mam.
You are to believe that enlisting in the U.S. Army will turn you into a Ninja
He will be insanely lucky, and smart.
Reacher will be an unstoppable beast-man.
There will be a body count, but it's OK, cause he's Reacher.
That's pretty much every Reacher novel.
Still fun though.
Rating:  -
Reacher's chance encounter with a woman who kills herself on a NYC subway car late at night leads him into lots of confrontations and action with the NYC police, FBI, other federal officers, and terrorists as he seeks to uncover the circumstances behind her death.
The writing is crisp and clean, with excellent details concerning NYC where most of the action occurs, and Reacher is always saracstic, witty and irreverent--along with being foolhardy, brave and creative in solving the mystery of the woman's death.
I disagree with the negative reviews that the plot was boring or unrealistic. To the contrary, this is a page turner and the narrative flows nicely. Without giving anything away, I do agree that Reacher's actions sometimes did remind me of Arnold S. in Commando, and that Reacher's decision to take on the "bad guys" by himself did strain plausibility, but doing so is in keeping with kind of guy he is--a self-reliant loner (he refuses to carry a cell phone)who does not like to play by the rules and enjoys getting into the thick of things.
The underlying premise behind the woman's death as well as the novel's conclusion are very realistic given the way intelligence communities work. I think Lee Child is definitely at the top of his game in this novel, and if you have never heard of Jack Reacher, you will want to read more about him after you see him in action in this novel.
Rating: -
New to Lee Child's books and not sure how I missed him. I'm now a true fan and have started to read the Reacher novels from the first one. Am thoroughly enthralled and thoroughly entertained. Mr. Child ... please keem 'em coming.
Rating: -
When I was perusing my local bookstore for literary entertainment, my attention was seized by the opening discussion on the "12 signs" for identifying a potential terrorist and went home with this novel. The story took me on a rip roaring adventure & fulfilled my desire for escapist edge of your seat thrills and danger which was what I was looking for. I recommend this to anyone who's looking for outrageous action/adventure fun.
Rating: -
We return to the thoughtful and imperfect Jack Reacher, with a quite intellectual plot. The motives unfold slowly and surprises are frequent. The egotism of the baddies does them in, very satisfactorily. I particularly liked the criticism on firing in bursts of three.
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