The Ultimate Reading Crowd Pleaser

Lee Child  was born Jim Grant on 29th October 1954.  He is a British thriller writer known for the Jack Reacher novel series.   The books follow the adventures of a former American military policeman who wanders the United States. His first novel, Killing Floor won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

Here's a bit about the man:
After being made redundant from his job due to corporate restructuring, Grant decided to start writing novels, stating they are "the purest form of entertainment." In 1997, his first novel, Killing Floor, was published, and he moved to the United States in the summer of 1998.     His pen name "Lee" comes from a family joke about mispronunciation of the name of Renault's Le Car, with "Child" indicating where Grant would place his work on bookstore shelves, i.e., between crime fiction stars Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie. 

Grant has said that he chose the name Reacher for the central character in his novels because he himself is tall and when they were grocery shopping his wife Jane remarked: "'Hey, if this writing thing doesn't pan out, you could always be a reacher in a supermarket.' ... 'I thought, Reacher — good name.'"  Some books in the Reacher series are written in first person, while others are written in the third person. Grant has characterised the books as revenge stories – "Somebody does a very bad thing, and Reacher takes revenge" – driven by his anger at the downsizing at Granada. Although English, he deliberately chose to write American-style thrillers. 

There is something about the success of this man that appeals to me.  Whilst he may not have been down on his uppers when he was made redundant nevertheless he seems to have taken up writing as something he could turn his hand to.  Like J K Rowling. 

I've nibbled away at the impressive list of Jack Reacher novels.  There are 21 to date and I have just read number 7, Persuader. 

Never forgive, never forget.

Jack Reacher lives for the moment. Without a home. Without commitment. But he has a burning desire to right wrongs.   The book is written as a first person narrative, the second Jack Reacher novel to be treated in this fashion.  Jack Reacher is working unofficially with the Drug Enforcement Administration to bring down a boy's father, Zachary Beck, who is an arms smuggler. By pretending to save the boy from his supposed kidnappers, Reacher gains access to Beck and gradually gains his confidence by working as a hired gun/bodyguard. While workind undercoverr he regrettably has to eliminate a few of Beck's minions to prevent them from exposing him. Reacher's primary motivation in getting involved at all in this off-the-books operation is to have another go at Francis Xavier Quinn, a former Military Intelligence agent who brutally mutilated and murdered a female military colleague of Reacher's ten years before. Reacher had originally presumed Quinn to be deceased after their last little encounter but eventually found that assumption to be incorrect after running into Quinn in public. It's ten years later and Quinn somehow just happens to be Zachary Beck's boss in a supremely lucrative, international gun-running enterprise. As always, it is Reacher's all-consuming obsession with revenge, or at least with his personal interpretation of doling out justice, which pushes him far beyond the normal boundaries of physical endurance and acceptable risk.