Reacher is back! A Wanted Man is a new masterpiece of suspense—from #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child.
Four people in a car, hoping to make Chicago by morning. One man driving, eyes on the road. Another man next to him, telling stories that don’t add up. A woman in the back, silent and worried. And next to her, a huge man with a broken nose, hitching a ride east to Virginia.
An hour behind them, a man lies stabbed to death in an old pumping station. He was seen going in with two others, but he never came out. He has been executed, the knife work professional, the killers vanished. Within minutes, the police are notified. Within hours, the FBI descends, laying claim to the victim without ever saying who he was or why he was there.
All Reacher wanted was a ride to Virginia. All he did was stick out his thumb. But he soon discovers he has hitched more than a ride. He has tied himself to a massive conspiracy that makes him a threat—to both sides at once.
In Lee Child’s white-hot thriller, nothing is what it seems, and nobody is telling the truth. As the tension rises, the twists come fast and furious, keeping readers guessing and gasping until the explosive finale.
About Lee Child
Lee Child is the author of seventeen Jack Reacher thrillers, including the New York Times bestsellers Persuader, The Enemy, One Shot, and The Hard Way, and the #1 bestsellers The Affair,Worth Dying For,61 Hours, Gone Tomorrow, Bad Luck and Trouble, and Nothing to Lose, as well as the short stories “Second Son” and “Deep Down.” His debut, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Mystery, and The Enemy won both the Barry and Nero awards for Best Novel. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in more than forty territories. All titles have been optioned for major motion pictures. A native of England and a former television director, Child lives in New York City, where he is at work on his next thriller, Never Go Back.
Editorial Review
Shortly after an eyewitness sees three men enter a small concrete bunker outside an anonymous town and only two of them emerge, Reacher, “just a guy, hitching rides,” is picked up by a trio of corporate-sales types: Alan King, Don McQueen and Karen Delfuenso. In a tour de force that runs well over a hundred pages, Child cuts back and forth between the clues county sheriff Victor Goodman and FBI agent Julia Sorenson gather concerning the unidentified man in the green coat who was stabbed to death inside that bunker and the inferences Reacher is making about his traveling companions. For one thing, it’s clear that King and McQueen know each other better than either of them knows Delfuenso; for another, a good deal of what they casually tell him about themselves isn’t true. Just when you’ve settled down expecting Child to keep up this rhythm indefinitely, he switches gears in an Iowa motel, and Reacher’s left out of danger but on his own—at least until Sorenson arrives to arrest him and the two of them form a quicksilver partnership whose terms seem to change every time Sorenson gets another phone call from the cops or the Feds. After working every change imaginable on their relationship, Child switches gears again and sends them a bang-bang assault on a hush-hush installation that shows how far into America’s heartland its enemies have penetrated. – Kirkus Reviews
Frayed Man of Action With a Head for Figures - ‘A Wanted Man: A Jack Reacher Novel’ by Lee Child
The New York Times Book Review – September 9, 2012 (Excerpt)
“A Wanted Man” is Lee Child’s 17th Jack Reacher novel and the last to be published before Reacher goes Hollywood with “Jack Reacher,” a big Christmas movie based on book No. 9, “One Shot,” and starring — can’t say it ain’t so, because it is — Tom Cruise. Mr. Cruise seems such a wrong choice to play this jumbo vigilante that this is a good moment to contemplate the essential Reacher: not just what he looks like but also what he really is.
Perhaps in sly response to a movie that will feature a lot of action, Mr. Child begins “A Wanted Man” by confining Reacher to very close quarters. The first 125 pages of this new novel are about a car trip. After waiting exactly 93 minutes on the eastbound ramp of a Nebraska highway, he successfully hitches a ride. The car contains two men and a woman, and Reacher knows nothing about them. Being Reacher, he will spend those first 125 pages observing every detail, watching every move, trying to deduce as much as he can. [Read the full article...]
Book World: 17th Jack Reacher novel too long, often baffling
The Washington Post Book Review – October 9, 2012 (Excerpt)
In 1995, at age 40, English-born Lee Child lost his job in television and decided to pursue his dream of writing crime fiction. His dream paid off. “A Wanted Man” is the 17th novel in his hugely popular series about that crime-fighting American vagabond Jack Reacher. I know people who have read all 17 books and loved every one. I’ve read five of them and have a more restrained view. Child is a gifted craftsman and storyteller who has created a memorable character, but the quality of his books varies considerably with the strength of their plots.
Certainly, Reacher is a great male fantasy. After 13 years in the U.S. military police, he became a rambling man, unburdened by wife, fixed address, car or credit card. He moves around America, mostly via bus or hitchhiking, and finds trouble wherever he goes. But that’s okay, because he’s a 6-foot-5, 250-pound one-man army, lethal with his fists and every imaginable weapon. Women adore him, but his adventures leave him little time for their charms. [Read the full article...]
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THE BLEEDING HILLS A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss
I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith. - 2 Timothy iv. 7
The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]
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THE BLEEDING HILLS
