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“Gone Tomorrow” by Lee Child

Posted by on March 18, 2017

Dell Books, 2009, Dell Mass Market Edition, 2010

Yes, another Jack Reacher novel. I like them. This is the 13th in the series.

The initial premise is very simple: Jack is riding a New York City subway train in the wee hours. There are six passengers in the car, including him. Four of the other passengers are the sleepy, glazed-eyed characters that he would expect to see in the middle of the night on the subway. But the sixth passenger – a woman – has all the earmarks of a suicide bomber. He could have gotten out at the next stop and been done with it, but that wouldn’t have been Jack Reacher. So he confronts the woman as gently as possible. She is distraught, no question, but what does she have in the bag? Is it a bomb? Nope – it is a gun, which she pulls out after a brief conversation with Reacher, points it at him, then turns it on herself and blows her head off.

Suicide by gun on a late-night subway? Pretty unusual. Reacher is not particularly interested at first. But then the FBI and some Washington spooks show up to interview him. They seem to be convinced that the woman passed something to him – a memory stick – before she cast off her mortal coil. She didn’t, but Jack was intrigued. What the heck was going on?

The plot deepens and becomes more sinister the longer he looks into it. Without giving too much away, I will tell you that it involves a guy running for the US Senate, secret Delta Force operations in Afghanistan and Muslim terrorists. As usual it is pretty much a Reacher-against-the-world situation where the feds are trying to arrest him even as the terrorists are trying to kill him. In the end he has to single-handedly take down a 19-person (or is it 20?) terrorist cell.

But Reacher can do it, no fear. He survives to move onto his 14th novel.

Great fun and one of the best Jack Reacher novels that I have read.

9 out of 10.

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