BLUE MOON by Lee Child
I came to appreciate author Lee Child late. Only after a recommendation by his fellow author Karen Slaughter did I read one of his books and that has been only a few years ago. Maybe it was those Tom Cruise movie versions of his books that turned me off, but for whatever reason I only jumped into the “Jack Reacher” waters a few novels ago. Now Lee Child is out with his twenty-fourth Jack Reacher story and it is titled BLUE MOON.
In this story Reacher is still rambling around America having retired from the Army. He has nothing to root him to any one place so a carefree life is what he chooses. Except in just about every place he lands for a few days he gets into trouble. The “trouble” is the basis for the immensely popular Jack Reacher books.
In BLUE MOON he arrives in an unnamed city and gets involved with some of the populace right away. An elderly man who has been on the bus with him steps off the bus and in a few blocks gets mugged. Reacher reacts as Reacher always reacts and stops the crime and bruises up the bad guy. He then goes to help the old man and with never a look backwards gets involved in his life and his problems.
One of the problems the old man faces is that he lives in a town that is split in two. One half of the city is controlled by the Albanians and the other half is controlled by the Ukrainians. There is no in between neutral zone. You are either in one controlled section or the other. When Reacher arrives in town there is a truce of sorts between these two opposing factions. It is a live and let live situation. As long as no one rocks the boat the two sides will live in harmony.
Reacher rocks the boat and the book takes off like a shot. This Reacher story is one of the fastest reading, most exciting books Child has ever written. In the few books I have read featuring Reacher he has seemed like a moderate soul. Not this time. He is going to right some wrongs and he is going to do it the hard way with a body count that adds up to more than all of the ones in the last few books. This is Reacher on a rampage.
What makes the Jack Reacher books stand out from other mysteries on the market is the logical way the story unfolds. Reacher is always a man with a plan and in this story it is more and more complicated than it usually gets. Still he goes about writing a variety of wrongs in a story full of drama and violence, plus a little humor and a little romance.
Books this good come around once in a (cough, cough) blue moon. And on that note I’ll just say I highly recommend Lee Child’s BLUE MOON.
BLUE MOON is published by Delacourte Press. It contains 356 pages and sells for $28.99.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
