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THE HARD WAY
by Lee Child
Delacorte, May 2006
384 pages
$25.00
ISBN: 0385336691


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Ex military man Jack Reacher does his best to stay under everyone's radar, but one day as he enjoys his coffee in an outdoor cafe in New York City he notices a man get into a car. The next day at the same coffee-house he's questioned as to what he saw and then is asked to help a man whose wife and stepdaughter have been kidnapped.

It seems that Reacher was the only one to see the man who had just taken a million dollar ransom but who had not given back the victims of the crime. Never one to let the innocent suffer, Jack agrees and soon meets with the head of an international private army of mercenaries, Edward Lane, whose family have been taken. Reacher agrees to search for the missing victims, but he'll do it his way.

Working on his own, Reacher delves into Lane's story and isn't thrilled at what he sees. A third-rate mercenary, the man has enemies, including his own men, some of whom he left on the fields of battle. Reacher also finds that Lane's first wife had also been kidnapped and had been killed, but there are rumors that she might not have been taken by strangers -- and Lane might have been behind that murder.

Now Reacher isn't sure whom to trust and he soon hooks up with the former FBI investigator, Lauren Pauling who had been in charge of the first Mrs Lane's kidnapping. He also meets the first wife's sister, who is obsessed with trying to get justice. When Reacher discovers one of the mercenaries who had been left behind in Africa to be tortured by the enemy while Lane took off with millions of dollars, Reacher fears that the wife and stepchild are in even more peril than he had originally thought.

Fast-paced action, solid storyline and surprising twists fill this book, along with enough realistic description of modern warfare to leave your guts in a knot. The action travels from the streets of New York City to the green rolling desolate farmlands of Great Britain. THE HARD WAY is book ten in the Jack Reacher series and is of as high quality as the rest.

The character of Reacher is an original one; he's a thinking and intelligent soldier, a master of hand-to-hand combat and weaponry. All of the secondary characters are superbly written, all ring true and are part of a story that will not permit you to put it down. THE HARD WAY is first-rate reading!

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, February 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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