Book: Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child


Good thriller

Gone Tomorrow
Lee Child
Delacorte, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-34057-1
421 pages
$27.00

Gone Tomorrow is the twelfth and latest of Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" thrillers. (I have also written about the first, Killing Floor.) Jack Reacher, our detective, is a drifter and a former American army officer in the military police. He's more interesting than likable, but he's certainly interesting. As the book begins, it's late at night and he's riding uptown on the New York subway number 6 train. Since it's late there are only a few other passengers in the subway car and he notices a woman who's acting strangely. And it's the kind of strangely that has been covered in his counter-terrorism training. He approaches her and, after they exchange a few words, she shoots herself messily in the head.

It turns out that she was from Virginia. What could motivate a person to travel hundreds of miles to commit suicide late at night in a subway train? It also turns out that she was a civilian records clerk at the Pentagon in the Army's human-resources department. If her suicide was motivated by something to do with her job, what could a records clerk have access to that could push her to suicide?

For a thriller, the book's beginning could hardly be bettered. And the ending is perfectly satisfying. If there's a little slack in the middle, there's also a very interesting game of deception that's being played during it. I ought to have caught on to it faster than I did. It's sufficiently clever and interesting that it raises the book above the usual run of thriller novels.

Posted: Wed - November 11, 2009 at 07:59 PM   Main   Category: 

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