Die Trying (Jack Reacher, Book 2)

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It turns out to be a very long ride in an Econoline van, all the way from Chicago to northwestern Montana, where a nutty but well-armed militia group is preparing to declare its independence from the United States. The kidnapped woman, Holly Johnson, is critical to the militia leader's plans. Holly specializes in finance and has a resume to die for, but she feels like she is always walking in her father's shadow, a high ranking member at the white house and her Godfather is the president himself. So, Holly makes a very nice bargaining chip. The second installment in the series wasn't as strong as the first, but it was still worthy of a four star rating. Lee Child still hasn't gotten past all the shrugging and nodding and his writing style still slows me down a bit. I have no idea how many ladies read this series, but I would imagine Reacher has a larger male fan base. Thus, the author goes into a great deal of detail about weapons and the speed of bullets and so on, which is interesting to a degree, but normally goes over my head and I tend to tune out during those paragraphs. But, my husband loves all that stuff. Add to this Child's punchy, staccato writing style, the deep thought analysis of Reacher calculating situations and the excellent action sequences I can easily rate this five stars very happily. The sniper sequences in his books I've always enjoyed and in Die Trying there is an absolute doozy.

When Holly's father finds out his daughter has been kidnapped,he along with Holly's staff with the FBI are hot on her trail. They have pictures of the kidnapping, but they think Reacher is one of the bad guys.There’s also plenty of writing surrounding marksmanship and Child does some nifty work describing the ballistics in a technical fashion that is fun to read. While held captive by the kidnappers Reacher impresses Holly with his calm, brains, physical fitness. He even tries psychological games on the kidnappers to gain some upper hand. I can wholeheartedly say that this book totally went above and beyond my expectations. It is a brilliant and intense mystery/thriller story with tons of action and several heart-stopping moments. If compared to the first book in the series, the plot is more complex and the characters have more depth. Surprisingly good! I can’t remember the last time I felt like my heart was going to burst from excitement while reading a book. Die Trying kept me on the edge of my seat the entire way through. He was standing next to a woman. He was holding her arm. He had never seen her before. She was staring at an identical nine-millimeter pointed at her own gut. Her guy was more tensed up than his. Her guy looked uneasy. He looked worried. His gun was trembling with tension. His fingernails were chewed. A nervous, jumpy guy. The four of them were standing there on the street, three of them still like statues and the fourth hopping slightly from foot to foot. How many girls will he meet over his lifetime, and he is already late thirties, so being the impatient person that I am, I am unable to stay in the moment and am fast forwarding quite rapidly. Reacher will always save the day, if he stuffs up he realises straight away and will always know how to right the wrong. The author knows a lot about weapons and military, I find this is interesting. I know nothing about this stuff but I feel I am in safe hands.

Sort of reminded me of John D. MacDonald’s 1979 Travis McGee novel The Green Ripper, and there are similarities between Reacher and McGee, but obliquely and MacDonald is the more thoughtful writer. While Child has Reacher making some astute social and cultural observations, this is nowhere near the level of subtly intellectual commentary MacDonald was able to pull off. Reacher may be an exceptional soldier, but sweeping other people’s secrets under the carpet isn’t part of his skill set. As he races to discover the link between these victims, and who killed them, he must navigate around the ulterior motives of his new ‘partners’. And all while moving into the sight line of some of the most dangerous people he has ever encountered.In fact coincidence is the key word in this novel, coincidence and cliché. Frankly there's way too much of them both throughout. The novel wavered between a 2-star and a 3-star for me. On the one hand the story was good and engaging. I wanted to keep reading to the end. On the other hand, some of the descriptive writing was so heavy handed it was laughable. I'm happy to put this down to second-novel nerves though. Just trying too hard to be better than the first success. Listening to the gloriously crunchy, gravelly tones of Jeff Harding doing this amazing Reacher character and bringing him to life was a complete wonder to me. It is exactly the voice I imagine the tough, aloof Reacher having even if the female characters don't fare quite so well. This was so bad. I started out really enjoying this series, but I'm losing interest. It's disappointing. Still, the flaws here are the kinds of things you’d expect from the genre and not the pure stupidity of the first book. That makes me think that maybe this series is worth a read after all.

My issues mostly remain with the writing itself. I find it choppy and very basic in terms of skill and delivery. The dialogue, too, often bothers me, especially with all the constant "he said this/he said that" nonsense. It's repetitive and often annoying, reading the exact same lines over and over.This time around Reacher is at the wrong place at the wrong time (and I’m guessing this will be a ubiquitous narrative device moving forward) and gets mixed up in some domestic terrorist assholery that also involves high levels of government. There’s plenty of fists and lead flying, blood and gore and big explosions. Lee has three homes—an apartment in Manhattan, a country house in the south of France, and whatever airplane cabin he happens to be in while traveling between the two. In the US he drives a supercharged Jaguar, which was built in Jaguar's Browns Lane plant, thirty yards from the hospital in which he was born. Spying/Terrorism Thriller - Yes Cloak & Dagger Plotlets: - kidnap/rescue Kid or adult book? - Adult or Young Adult Book On the way, Reacher learns the woman is an FBI agent named Holly Johnson, though she doesn't tell him she's the daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or goddaughter of the President, having been accused of being the beneficiary of nepotism all her life. ... The handgun was a nine-millimeter automatic. It was brand-new. It was oiled. It was held low, lined up right on his old scar. The guy holding it looked more or less like he knew what he was doing. The safety mechanism was released. There was no visible tremor in the muzzle. No tension. The trigger finger was ready to go to work. Reacher could see that. He was concentrating hard on that trigger finger.