Persuader: A Jack Reacher Novel

Rating:
Summary: A Winner Again
Review: Lee Child never disapoints. Jack Reacher again comes through with all the grit and strength he has shown in all his other novels. I have come to find even though he has a Rambo style about him, he works with a good investigative mind. I sincerly recommend this book. I have now read all of them and there is not one I wouldn't highly applaud.


Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly good book
Review: This book takes off right at the beginning. Reacher is an interesting character who is still haunted by the past. This was my first Reacher book that I read, and can't wait to read the others . Yet, the book was still understable even if it was the 7th book of the series. The book has wall to wall action and well written. It contains lots of great twists.Reacher is a likeable character, who is very human.

Rating:
Summary: My First Reacher Novel
Review: Very action-packed from beginning to end. Reacher is on a mission to seek vengeance for the death of a former female subordinate in the Army. As usual, he has many hoops to jump through and is working with the FBI to hunt him down. The FBI has an altogether different motive to locate this individual because he might be responsible for a missing undercover agent whose cover was probably blown.

Really good story. There are surprises in this one until the very end.

Rating:
Summary: Jack reacher, the ultimate "Survivor"
Review: A Jack Reacher novel is always a roller coaster ride, one you can't get off once it's started. Persuader is in true Reacher form, from the first wild seconds of deadly gunplay and an aborted kidnapping to a race to avoid pursuing the cops.

As an ex-military intelligence officer, Reacher knows everything there is to know about survival, handling sophisticated weapons and generally outsmarting his opponents. In Persuader, he uses all of his considerable resources to get out of a dangerous situation alive, against odds that would deter a lesser man. Reacher's world is one of absolutes: me or them. Decisions are fateful and final.

After pulling off the wild rescue of a college student, Reacher is persuaded to drive the boy home, in expectation of gratitude and a monetary reward. He finds himself held in a fortress built at the edge of the ocean in Maine, a place that is virtually impenetrable and heavily guarded by steroid-popping giants. Obviously, the boy's father is up to something more illegal than the rug importing business he claims. Meanwhile, Reacher makes a deal with the FBI to retrieve an agent who has disappeared behind the fortress' walls.

No surprise to Reacher fans, once committed to a task, that's it for this hero. Even thought the past reaches out and threatens to interfere with his survival instincts, Jack keeps his perspective, tough-minded and serious as death. Unfortunately, the body count rises with every day that he stays inside the fortress. But Reacher is on a deadline and time has run out.

Blow by blow, the author reveals the usual assortment of nefarious characters, undercover FBI agents and innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, skillfully juxtaposed, all headed toward a violent showdown. And always one thought drives the intrepid Reacher on: them or me. Outthink. Outplay. Outlast. Jack Reacher is the ultimate survivor. Luan
Gaines/2004.






Rating:
Summary: My new Jack Reacher obsession.
Review: Back in June of this year I heard an interview with Lee Child on NPR. Then within days I found my first Jack Reacher book in a used book store and within two weeks I'd read them all. I find them impossible to put down, so I start them at night so I can just keep reading till I'm done without interuption. I suspend disbelief easily and love comic book, larger-than-life characters so Reacher appeals to me greatly.

The stories often depend on bizarre coincidences that bring Reacher into contact with some government agency usually the FBI, CIA, the military or all three. Then the plots evolve as Reacher makes decisions on directions to follow to solve the problem. Often his decisions and conclusions are wrong so the path deviates and twists until he has his moment of epiphany and gets to the bottom of the conspiracy.

The reader knows that Reacher will get into one perilous situation after another, but the fun is in seeing how he will get out of it because there is no question that he will, he always does. The anticipation is never marred by worrying that he won't find a way out, it's in the process he goes through to extracate himself. Often his solutions are so much a part of his extremely pragmatic approach to placing himself in danger or to killing that it's hard for me as a reader to figure them out ahead of time, because, as a sort of couch potato voyeur, I lack experience with either danger or killing. So I remain in suspense even as I am reassured that he will always survive the monstrous mess.

Yojimbo is a favorite movie of mine and in the finest samurai tradition, Reacher gets into trouble the moment he loses his objectivity and becomes altruistic.

I also love the government agents who can be so nasty, vindictive and who fulfill our spy and thriller loving expectations of the genre (including the interagency rivalry so much in the news today). The books are very detailed and this is important. They follow the tradition of Le Carre's Smiley stories as any good thriller/spy novel should.

Some people might object to the one dimensional female characters. They are mostly the same, government agents or lawyers, smart, beautiful, competent but mostly the same. Because of their tendency to be predictable though, they don't distract from the action of the novels, so maybe that works. However, Jack has so much testosterone (in one book he is described as looking like a condom stuffed with walnuts) at six feet five inches that I wonder if the best woman for him might indeed be a man.

Well, that sums it up. Suspend your disbelief and just enjoy the spectacular ride!



Rating:
Summary: My first Reacher Novel, but not Last!
Review: I found this book in a hotel reading library and decided to give it a try, and all I can say is WOW! If you like adreniline thrill rides this is the book for you! Jack Reacher Is a great Character, A man's man. Has the same attraction for me as Dirk Pitt of Cussler fame (though different in many ways). Now I have to goa back read the rest of the series?