The Hard Way

Choosing the next Jack Reacher novel from Lee Child was not tough. Logically I picked up the novel next to One Shot (the first one I read; courtesy Don) – The Hard Way for my journey from Hoshiarpur to Hyderabad, possibly the last journey on this track :-).

Contradictory to my guess, it did not start from where One Shot left. Jack Reacher finds himself in a new puzzle this time in New York; a kidnap mystery in which he gets involved by a shear stroke of luck. As magnet attracts the metal, any nearby complicated crime finds Reacher.

The complication was really tightly knit by Lee. While helping a military contractor find his wife, he stumbles upon an unsolved mystery of his previous while. Solving the mysteries he realizes that was a Catch 22 situation for Reacher where he seemed to be surrounded by Bad Guys on all sides. By the time we reach the climax, he is ready to take all of them down one by one. This is when the mystery turns into an action thriller and the Sherlock dons the of Bond….James Bond.

Interestingly enough, Lee has characterized Reacher in such a way that whatever he wants, he gets it done from him. This makes the reader difficult to find a pattern in Reacher’s approach making the story less predictable.

On my next journey am planning to pick up Lee’s 1^st Reacher novel. Hope it is as interesting as The Hard Way.