61 Hours (Hardcover)

A disappointment I have read all of Lee Childs' books and was eagerly looking forward to reading 61 hours. All I can say it is long on narrative and short on action. If it wasn't for the weather description it could have been cut down to half it's length. I hope the follow up in September re-ignites my interest.

Wrong place, wrong time. Jack keeps up his habit of arriving in the wrong the place at the wrong time. And Lee Child continues his fine run of form with this new Reacher thriller set in the snowy wastes of Dakota and as far removed from his previous city based novel 'Gone Tomorrow' as you can get. This is an exciting fast paced read with the clock ticking all the time towards the inevitable climax. Reacher has shown more vulnerability and doubt of late and Child has thus saved him from being the one dimensional killing machine he could so easily be percieved to be. Has Jack met his end? How will Child resolve the ambiguity? The sequel will be along soon, minus 61 hours and counting.....

STERLING NARRATION OF THIS THRILLER It seems there are no more words of praise to be heaped upon Dick Hill's readings. As audio book aficionados know he's a whiz at thrillers, although he does a variety of genres. Hill has been named a Golden Voice and a Voice of the Century by AudioFile magazine, and has a trio of Audie Awards. His name on an audio edition promises an exciting voice performance. He has said that he takes a visual approach to narrating books, noting "I have a visual picture of the scene" He's such a pro that even when the scene shifts from day to night he subtly shifts his voice to show the change. If he's not already on the top of your list of voice performers he surely will be after you hear him deliver this Jack Reacher thriller. Just as Hill is at the top of his game so is Lee Child with this his 14th Reacher novel. Most are already hooked on this series - if you're not you will be after 13 hours of the best listening entertainment around. Yep the iconic Reacher is back, the six footer who takes big risks and wins every fight. He has hands the size of "supermarket chickens" and a brawn to match. Toss in street savvy plus braininess and you have him. This time out we find him on a tour bus loaded with elderly passengers tooling across South Dakota until the bus skids off the road. No surprise that the weather in that state isn't exactly welcoming - blizzard conditions and the wind chill is diving to 50 below. Bolton is the nearby town. Unfortunately the few motels are full because the relatives of those in a correctional facility have taken all the rooms. Residents welcome the elderly but not Reacher. What could possibly be going on in a town the size of Bolton? For starters there's a strange old Army installation that is now headquarters for drug dealers, an older woman who claims to have witnessed a drug deal (not a good thing to claim if you're interested in longevity), there's Plato (a Mexican drug lord), and, of course, an attractive woman. Child shows his chops with an ending that leaves all wanting more, and Dick Hill makes us shiver not only with the deadly cold but because of a fierce assassin intent on doing his job. - Gail Cooke

Yeah Fine Another very good Reacher story, not one of the best hence 4 stars but absorbing and exciting. Noticeably less action than previous novels.

More action than ever before for our minimalist action hero What a guy, that drifter who travels light and never looks back. Jack Reacher's legions of fans are going to have a whole lot to like in "61 Hours," Lee Child's latest in the series (14 with number 15 due in October), which began in 1997 with "The Killing Floor," and has been burning up the best seller lists every since. His latest takes place in a one-horse town on the frozen Northern Plains in South Dakota, U.S.A. amid a fierce winter blizzard. The thriller is as sharply etched as the crystals of frost on the parlor window of the Victorian mansion where much of the action unfolds. Reacher finds himself snowbound after a tour bus heading toward Mount Rushmore National Monument fishtails off the road outside the town of Bolton, S.D. The bus is carrying 20 elderly tourists from a Seattle, Wash. church group, "cotton-headed women" and their "geezers" and one six-foot, five-inch super hero not from Seattle and "not handsome like a movie star, but not ugly either." There's a fierce blizzard on the way. The stranded tourists and Reacher are transported to the town for the duration. All the motels are full because Bolton is the site of super-max prison and the next day is visiting day. The elderly tourists are farmed out to town residents but no one wants to take in a solitary drifter who travels without a coat in the dead of winter. in the Jack Reacher adventurers, there is always a woman to parry and thrust with. In "61 Hours" there are two and the most interesting of them is schoolmarmish Janet Salter, 70-ish, who comes across as televsion's Aunt Bee doing a mind meld with Dr. Spock. Thanks to Salter, we learn a few new things about our minimalist action figure, in addition to the fact that he's "the sort of guy to see things five seconds before the rest of the world." She asks Reacher about his preference for traveling light: "Is it a phobia? Or a philia? Or a consciously existential decision? Your disavowal of possessions is a little extreme. History tells us that asceticism has powerful attractions, but even so ascetics owned clothes, at least. Shirts, anyway, even if they were only made of hair." And for the final word on the matter, "You could afford to carry a small bag, I think. It wouldn't change who you are." Reacher ends up as Salter's houseguest. Salter, it turns out, is under protection of the town police after witnessing a drug deal involving a nasty group of methamphetamine-dealing bikers who have taken over a long-abandoned Cold War-era military installation west of town. The extreme cold, the mysterious military installation, the just-opened correctional facility, the band of bikers are all part and parcel of the action and the requisite surprises that occur over the next 61 hours, zero minutes. Add to the countdown a diminutive but very treacherous and powerful Mexican drug lord named Plato and all the pieces are in place for pages of seat-of-the-pants storytelling. Although we get a pretty good idea of what it means to be stuck in blizzard, it is clear as crystalline lake ice that Child has not spent enough time in one of the Plains states burrowed in for the winter. "The Crown Vic's dash was showing the outside temperature at twelve degrees below zero. If he switched the engine off he might never get it started again. He had read a book set above the Arctic circle where you had to thaw the engine block with blowlamps." Twelve below? Heck, that's almost balmy as far as car starting goes in this part of the Midwest. At twenty below we start to think about plugging in the engine block heater. The action at times takes on the frenzy and programmed feel of a video game. You also sense it is constructed using a finely tuned and well burnished formula that Child has worked out long ago. But no matter. Formulaic or not, Child is masterful and in top form in "61 Hours." This 14th Jack Reacher thriller succeeds in out pacing and in throwing out more twists and genuine surprises than any of the 13 before it. (American edition)