Jack Reacher is a regular in the books we have reviewed and we have reviewed several of the books here, the last two being One Shot and The Enemy. This feels like a simpler story in the beginning until you get into it, and then Lee Child action and twists keep coming, keeping you glued to the pages until the very end.
Reacher is sitting and eating in a restaurant where he idly notices a man getting into a parked, expensive car and drive away. He goes to the same restaurant the next day and is interviewed by a man who seems to be ex service (England). The man requests Reacher to come and talk to their boss and Reacher agrees to do just that. When he goes there, he realizes that the head honcho, Edward Lane, is in trouble. His wife was kidnapped and the ransom money was collected to pay for her. That money was in a locked car, which was just carried away by one of the kidnappers. But they have not released Edward’s wife within twenty four hours, as they promised. Edward is not sure how to proceed.
. Reacher offers to help, if Edward wants to take it. Edward wants no police involved at this stage, but refuses to explain it.
Reacher comes to some conclusions when he hears the details. He knows that they came from the north of the city and likely live about 200 km away. He knows that they, whoever they are, know Edward Lane enough to know what cars he owns and that he can find a million dollar in cash at will. He also guesses that they will be kicking themselves on how easy it was to extract the money out of him and therefore will call him shortly with additional ransom demands, almost for sure. And also for sure is the fact that Tony, the driver who was in the car when Lane’s wife was kidnapped, is almost surely dead by now since the kidnappers are known to Lane and therefore most likely to the driver too.
He agrees to go and watch when the call for additional cash comes in. He acts as if a bum but a pickpocket figures him out looking at the shoes which were shiny and expensive in contrast to Reacher’s clothes and gets his wrist broken for his pains. However, after the key was pushed into the slot he waits for someone to come out of the door but when no one comes for a long time, he gets up (a bum finishing his rough sleeping) and casually strolls to the car. The car is missing. He realizes that there must be a back entrance in the supposedly abandoned building.
He poses as a buyer and goes with an agent to the building and finds that it is in ruins and not even livable because there are no rooms either. It is just like a huge empty box with a ladder on the side. They realize that the people who need to stay hidden can only get into the building through the ladder – a note for the next time.
When the next call comes, Reacher gets into the car (back seat, down so that no one will know) and watches the vehicle being taken over by a nondescript looking guy. He drives away before Reacher can react.
Now they are back to Square One. Reacher goes out for a walk and comes face to face with the younger sister of Ann, the first wife of Lane. Patti, as she introduces herself, tells Reacher that Lane is the one who had ordered the ‘kidnapping and murder’ of Ann several years ago in a similarly staged kidnapping plot. She says that Lane is abusive and Patti urged Ann to get out of the relationship while she still could but Ann held out for the money that she brought into the marriage. As proof, she says that the two agents she thinks Lane hired secretly were both killed in ‘accidents’ soon after. She strongly wonders if the current kidnapping has also been engineered by Lane himself.
One of the people there, Burke, tells Reacher that the two operatives who (according to Patti) engineered Ann’s kidnapping may have been left alive and have returned, seeking revenge on Lane.
There were two of them. One was called Hobart and the other one was called Knight. They investigate and realize (from a room that the kidnapper had rented) that the man was probably one with a tongue cut out. Since they knew Hobart or Knight came back, they conclude that this person was the one responsible for kidnapping. (The other one, they learn from police sources, died in Africa.) The ransom money was exactly half of what Lane demanded for the job in Africa – the final request was for an odd number – and this seems to tie in with what they expected. Finally, after a great effort by the police source, Reacher and the lawyer Anna Pauling get the name of the person who came back – Hobart.
When they worm their way into the house of his sister – who they think was the accomplice speaking on his behalf – they realize that this man could speak but was close to death and what’s more, did not have arms and legs – a result of the torture endured. So he was not the average looking man of the various witness descriptions who took the money in the car. So who was it?
Nevertheless, the descriptions of the torture that both suffered and Hobart’s conviction that his partner was the target and he the unwitting collateral damage are stunning. Hobart even tells Reacher that his partner Knight took Anne, Lane’s first wife, out to kill her and Lane trapped him in Africa to ‘tie up loose ends for good’. He, Hobart, by deciding to move into the same foxhole as Knight, turned out to be abandoned as well. There is a heartrending expose of ‘birthday celebrations’ by the militias who captured them by asking which arm/ leg they want amputated. Knight gives up and dies after the fourth year by not asking to be cauterized after the amputation – simply chooses to bleed to death.
Knowing that this rules out Hobart as the killer, and sorry for his state, Reacher decides to take the money offered from Lane and plough it all to Hobart – after he finds the real killer and handing the name over to Lane. He rethinks the story and gets stuck on the fact that even though he was sure that the time of the first car takeover was (in his mind) 11:49 PM, Gregory thought it ought to be midnight. Reacher knows he is never wrong about the time of the day – he has an internal clock. So what does the discrepancy mean?
He and Pauling walk back to the key dropoff and find the original keys thrown into the slot! (A Mercedes key and a BMW key). Reacher was right : they never took the keys – it was a feint. The keys used were the valet keys which means Taylor (or someone deep within Lane’s team) was in on the game. Then they get to checking of the corpse found in the river was really Taylor. The story heats up. They track Taylor to England, and, by dint of a phone number that was in Taylor’s speed dial list, his sister’s place and name. When they go towards the village, they stop at an inn because it had grown too dark and sitting there sipping his beer, they see Taylor.
Taylor, of course, has never seen them before.
He then realizes where Taylor is hiding and decides to go back to London. Lane promised to follow in 24 hours and he decides to give Lane the name when he is there. Just at the last moment, almost too late, he realizes some clues for him to realize that he has been wrong again. He races ahead, almost too late back to the place but Lane is on his tail, bent on revenge.
Pauline and Reacher then hatch a brilliant plan to rectify the major mistake they almost made. Then follows another brilliant and trademark Reacher confrontation where Reacher manages to outwit the pursuers in several brilliant and unexpected moves.
I don’t want to give much away but after a relatively simple narration for what I thought was a simple plot, the blinds and the double blinds all make excellent sense.
A very good story indeed, including the pure adrenaline filled action sequences at the end.
7/10
= = Krishna
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