61 Hours

March 1, 2010
After a brief stop in New York City (Gone Tomorrow
), Jack Reacher is back in his element—Smalltown, U.S.A.—in bestseller Child's fine 14th thriller to feature the roving ex-military cop. When a tour bus on which he bummed a ride skids off the road and crashes, Reacher finds himself in Bolton, S.Dak., a tiny burg with big problems. A highly sophisticated methamphetamine lab run by a vicious Mexican drug cartel has begun operating outside town at an abandoned military facility. After figuring out the snow-bound, marooned Reacher's smart, great with weapons, and capable of tapping military intelligence, the helpless local cops enlist his assistance, and, as always, he displays plenty of derring-do, mental acuity, and good old-fashioned decency. While the action is slower than usual, series fans will appreciate some new insights that Child provides into his hero's psyche and background as well as a cliffhanger ending. Author tour.

June 28, 2010
Narrator Dick Hill has been perfecting Reacher's hard-boiled verbal swagger for years. In this installment, Reacher is stranded in a snow-bound South Dakota town where a biker gang has turned an abandoned facility into a meth lab. A member of the gang is in prison awaiting trial, and a hit man has been hired to remove the only witness to the crime, a 70-something librarian. According to a curious stipulation, every time the prison's trouble gong sounds every policeman in town must report there immediately—even if it means leaving the sweet old librarian to the mercy of the unknown assassin. Happily, none of these convolutions give Hill pause. It's his job to entertain, and that he does, almost chuckling as he describes Reacher's takedown of two giant bikers, relishing the hero's heralded powers of observation, or summoning up a large, accented ration of nastiness for the villain of the piece, a diminutive Mexican crime boss named Plato. When the book finally arrives at the end of its 61-hour countdown, thanks to Hill the time seems to have been well spent. A Delacorte hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 1).

Starred review from April 15, 2010
When a bus full of seniors spins out of control, the obvious recourse is to reach out for Reacher (Gone Tomorrow, 2009, etc.).

On its way to Mt. Rushmore, a bus carrying a load of elderly tourists, plus a ringer, loses to a patch of ice. Reacher's the ringer. Some 30 years younger than the average age of his fellow passengers, he's among them by happenstance, a kind of hitchhiker. Reacher—that inveterate nomad, indefatigable Rambo and Galahad for all seasons—finds himself once more in the midst of an authentic mess. Banged up and inoperable, the bus has come to rest in Bolton, S.D., a town buried in snow and heaps of trouble. There's the biker gang living on its outskirts, making crystal meth. There's a repellent figure named Plato, a racketeering lowlife, whose philosophy is kill everything on the theory that if it lives, whatever it is, it might at some point have a negative Platonic effect. And then there's grandmotherly Janet Salter. Sweet, smart, elegant and pound for pound as brave as Reacher, she's a retired librarian, from Oxford's Bodleian, no less. She's also a witness to a grisly murder. Desperate to keep her alive, the Bolton PD has begun to think it might not be able to. Andrew Peterson, the department's deputy chief, wants to ask Reacher for help. And when his reluctant boss asks why, he says,"I think he's the sort of guy who sees things five seconds before the rest of the world." Well, he's right about that, of course, but even Reacher will be shaken by some of what he sees before exiting Bolton en route to Nowhere, his country of choice.

In his 14th outing, implausible, irresistible Reacher remains just about the best butt-kicker in thriller-lit.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from March 15, 2010
Large and deadly, footloose former army major Jack Reacher returns in his 14th outing (after "Gone Tomorrow"). This time, the retired military cop gets stranded by a ferocious blizzard in the town of Bolton, SD. Reacher has to deal with a hired assassin, a prison breakout, a mob of biker thugs, a secret government installation, a clutch of senior citizen tourists who thought a frigid vacation in South Dakota would save money, and a witness who needs protection from a murderous drug lord from Mexico. Just an ordinary day on the job for Reacher as the "61 hours" count down to an exciting climax. VERDICT Child's protagonist is a wandering knight who always finds trouble and inevitably solves it, with satisfying violence. As usual, Child's writing is superb. Not only is this thriller believable, but the descriptions of the blizzard will make readers want to hug their furnaces. Fast paced and exciting, this is highly recommended for thriller fans. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 1/10; library marketing.]Robert Conroy, Warren, MI

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2010
Coming off Gone Tomorrow (2009), one of the very best among his 13 high-octane thrillers, Child keeps his foot hard on the throttle. Theres always a ticking clock in the background whenever our off-the-grid hero, Jack Reacher, finds a wrong that needs righting, but this time the clock drives the narrative. When a lawyer arrives at a South Dakota prison to visit a client, were told that its five minutes to three in the afternoon, exactly 61 hours before it happened. Meanwhile, Reacher wakes up from a nap to discover that the tour bus on which hes cadged a ride is spinning out of control on an icy bridge. By the time he helps the injured senior citizens aboard the bus, there are 59 hours left. But we still dont know what were waiting for. The clock continues to tick as Reacher, now without a ride, lands in Boulton, South Dakota, and finds himself helping out the local police as they attempt to protect a key witness in an upcoming drug trial. Then theres the matter of the peculiar underground installation outside of town, formerly a military outpost but now apparently housing a meth lab. As the hours fall away and the tension builds, we learn more about the installation, the local cops, and a Mexican drug lord whose own clock is ticking in sync with Reachers, but were still not prepared for what happens when the sixty-first hour arrives. One expects a novel organized around a clock to be plot driven, and thats certainly true here. But, as always, Child delivers enough juicy details about the landscape, the characters, and Reachers idiosyncrasies to give the story texture and to lower our pulse rates, if only momentarily. Even without the apparently game-changing finale, this is Child in top form, but isnt he always?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)