A Book Review: Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #13)

Lee Child's Jack Reacher series may be crime thrillers, but I think Jack Reacher is a fantasy of a man. Reacher doesn't have a job, he is a vagrant who diets on cheeseburgers and pan cakes, but he never goes broke and he has the physique of a WWF wrestler. It suffices to say, these books ask you to suspend a whole lot of disbelief.

But I love this series anyway!

My review for Gone Tomorrow will tell you why I am fond of this series. But firstly let me provide a synopsis for the book.

Synopsis:

Jack Reacher is a drifter. He is here today, and gone tomorrow.

It was 2AM in New York. A subway train was gliding along the tracks. Jack Reacher was sitting on the train and staring at four passengers. Three of them were ordinary people going about their own businesses. But Jack thought something smelled fishy about the fourth person.

“May be a suicide bomber”, thought Jack.

On the swaying train, Jack Reacher approached the fourth passenger, and the suspect did the unthinkable...

My thoughts on this book:

Gone Tomorrow captured the bone and the marrow of what made this series so good; the suspense, the deductions, and the justice.

I can't say too much about the plot, because it will spoil the story. Let me just say, the first page in Gone Tomorrow immediately seized my attentions. From there, every following chapter was a surprise. This book was suspenseful from the beginning to the end. It was a hell of a ride to follow Jack Reacher while he was solving the crime. Lee Child wrote this book with his signature writing style; hardboiled, punchy, and brutal. The writings matched perfectly to Jack Reacher's character. Every page in this book delivered a powerful imagery too hard to erase from my memory.

Gone Tomorrow also differed from its peers. Many Jack Reacher books were set in small towns, but Gone Tomorrow was set in New York. The metropolitan setting was refreshing, a welcoming break to the series' pattern. As usual, reading about Reacher's thought process was fun. It was very interesting to see how Jack Reacher altered his methods, because he was operating in a big city instead of a small town.

This book also had a lot of actions. In fact, I think Gone Tomorrow is the most action-packed Jack Reacher book I've read. The action scenes in this book were nail-biting. The antagonists were smart and terribly cruel, they sent chills down my spine. Reacher was outnumbered, but the book showed us how the gears were turning in his head, how he analyzed every situation and maneuvered tactically to take out his opponents. The last 50 pages of this book had me sitting at the edge of my seat, it was a thing that I will not forget anytime soon. Here I have to put up a warning. Gone Tomorrow is VERY violent. But the violence added weights to the story, rendering Reacher's quest for justice meaningful but haunting at the same time.

Gone Tomorrow, what a great book! After I returned this book to the library, I came home and toyed with the idea of buying a copy for myself. I will re-read this book. Meanwhile, I highly recommend Gone Tomorrow to those who have an interest in crime thrillers.