One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9) | Lee Child

One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9) | Lee Child | Bang on Target!!!

books:

One Shot (Jack Rea...

	One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9) Lee Child Dell, 2006 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 128 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Child at His Best

In this Reacher installment, a sniper guns down several people as they are leaving work and Reacher finds himself in the middle of all the action. All evidence points to a man who has an ugly past which Reacher knows about but it's too much of a slam dunk to be convinced that it's him. The evidence points to a setup and Reacher and the family's defense attorney are out to find the truth.

This is one of the best Child books I've read so far. Next to Tripwire and the Killing Floor, this story ranks at the top.

Bang on Target!!!

If the President had sent Jack Reacher after Osama bin Laden, the elusive terrorist would now be sharing a cell with Saddam Hussein and our troops would be on their way home from Iraq! What a guy --- Triple X, Indiana Jones and Don Quixote all rolled into one. Lee Child has brought his series hero through some impossible situations, yet with each new book he maintains a level of interest and suspense that is seldom found so consistently. ONE SHOT grabs you in the first few paragraphs and doesn't let go until the last sentence.

For those who haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting Jack Reacher, he is retired from a fourteen-year stint in the Army as a Major in the Military Police. He is not only a crack investigator but also a marksman, weapons expert and survivalist. In addition, he's a handsome rascal who knows how to charm women in several different languages. And, while he can be merciless toward his enemies, he is fiercely loyal to his friends and is willing to put his life on the line for anyone who has been victimized by the bad guys. However, he guards his freedom and has nothing to tie him down. No apartment, no car, no cell phone, no credit cards --- only a few sets of clothes and a toothbrush, living the totally feng shui-ed life.

In ONE SHOT, our hero is enjoying the Florida sunshine with a dancer from a Norwegian cruise ship. Meanwhile, up in the heartland, a sniper has gunned down five people, and when he is caught he claims his innocence and asks for Jack Reacher. Although the shooter was never a friend, James Barr had been stationed with Reacher for several years. During that time, in a weird series of events, Barr had opened fire on a military group yet had never been indicted. Reacher heads north hoping that he can testify for the prosecution and finally see Barr brought to justice.

Almost from the beginning of his involvement, Reacher's suspicions are aroused because the airtight case against James Barr appears to be too perfect. Soon Russian Mafia types are tailing him and innocent people are being killed and kidnapped. Meanwhile, the mutilated, mysterious Russian, Zec, and his henchmen always seem to be one step ahead of the police, adding another dimension of suspense.

In ONE SHOT the author provides Reacher with a competent and compatible back-up team as our hero unravels the mystery. Deftly, Child holds back just enough to build tension and keep the reader from getting ahead of his characters. When the climax is reached, loose ends are tied up and the good guys win. Perfect. This is Lee Child's eighth novel, and he soon should be rocketing to overnight success.

for more information click here

Another crisply plotter thriller, just screaming for Hollywood to come knocking...

...as reportedly they have, along with (please, Lee, just say no) Tom Cruise.

This ninth thriller in the Jack Reacher series from author Lee Child is a case in point as to how difficult it is to create a realistic, believable character and perpetuate the idea over a series of novels.

I jumped into the Reacher series with The Killing Floor, and have since bounced back and forth catching up. For those who don't know, Reacher is basically an updated version of Clint Eastwood's The Drifter from Sergio Leone's seminal spaghetti western, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: He's a huge, musclebound man's man; a brilliant, ex-military cop who now wanders around America with just the clothes on his back, seeing the sights and supplimenting his government pension with the occasional odd job; righting dastardly wrongs in a new town in every new book, after which beautiful women 'ooh' and 'aah' and throw themselves at him.

Child's writing has improved dramatically over the course of this series: one of my earliest problems with Child's style being his choppy prose and almost forced use of short plain sentences, to the point that he's almost dictating the seemingly endless pages of unnessesary exposition (Reacher got off the bus, feeling groggy. He walked to town. He found a restaurant that was open early. Sat with his back to the wall so he could watch the doors and the rest of the customers. The waitress came by, smacking gum. Reacher ordered an omelet. The scarred man at a table across the room stared at him menacingly.), and his fascination with precise descriptions of weapons and ammunition (Reacher ate his omelete. Drank his coffee. Put down his cup. Then he shot the scarred man between the eyes with a single bolt-action carbine M16 that uses spring-loaded, ten-gauge buckshot specifically used by the Russian army circa February of 1962...) and on and on.

Okay, so that was just a silly example of my own, but not far off. And after nine books with pages and pages of prose like that, it gets distracting. And something else, while I'm on a tangent: for somebody who was supposed to be such a great investigator, Reacher just doesn't seem all that freakin' smart. He just kind of lumbers around until the bad guys jump out at him, firing with all barrels blazing.

Don't get me wrong - I actually like these books. They're deftly plotted, quick and fun James Bond style summer-type reads with plenty of no-hold barred action. This is just fair warning to make sure to actively suspend your disbelief while reading them.

And now, to One Shot. Here, as with all the Reacher novels, the action starts at the very first page. No slow build up - Child just dives right in. The story begins as a sniper methodically assassinates five apparently random civilians - bang, bang, bang - miss! - bang, bang. The police have a suspect and a slam-dunk case built mere hours after the killings. Reacher learns of the case - and of the killer - that night, while watching television in a hotel room (after getting picked up while tanning on a Miami beach by one of the aforementioned Beautiful Women).

Reacher is once again pulled into a new web of danger because of a name out of his past, and immedately leaves for Indiana, and the site of the shootings. He wanders into town with theme music blaring (Whaa-whaa-whaa!), a la Eastwood; ready to kick ass and take names - or at least make sure the man arrested for the killings (ex-military specialist James Barr) goes down for the count. In due course, Reacher learns not everything here is exactly as it seems - Barr claimed the cops got the wrong guy, before slipping into a coma after a random beating while in prison, and now his estranged sister want justice. Reacher begins to investigate, learning that the whole thing, the whole set-up was just too slick. And eventually he sets out to find and punish the real bad guys, as only Jack Reacher can.

I'll close here with a plea to Child - don't sell out to the Hollywood star machine too fast: Eastwood and Connery might be too long in the tooth for the part, but tiny little pansy-man Tom Cruise is no Jack Reacher.

for more information click here

Kept me entertained and awake

Not always do books keep my attention but I breezed through it in one flight. Everyone has covered the plot so here is my thought.

There were some areas a bit shaky and some that were not explored far enough. But overall, the reading was quick, entertaining and keot you wanting the next chapter. I appreciated how it flipped back and forth between different groups of characters to keeo the timelines in sync. I dislike books that each chapter make you go back in time. This followed realtime on both sides, the good and evil

Another well done Jack Reacher novel

for more information click here