Independent reviews of your favourite books & role play games
Lee Child
This is the first of the Jack Reacher novels and commences a few months after Jack has left the army. Highly recommended. Boris
Tripwire by Lee Child
This Jack Reacher novel starts with Jack digging swimming pools by hand in Key West. He’s not pleased when a private detective sent by a mysterious Mrs Jacobs comes nosing around looking for him. When Costello the private detective ends up dead with his fingers chopped off, Jack decides to go looking for Mrs Jacobs. Meanwhile an elderly couple are looking for their son, Victor Hobie who went missing during the Vietnam War. In New York a vicious man named Victor Hobie is terrorising Chester Stone a businessman and his wife Marilyn. Victor Hobie wants ownership of Stone’s failing company and will stop at nothing to gain control of it. Why is Mrs Jacobs looking for Jack Reacher? And what are the links between a man who went missing in Vietnam, a sadistic murderer and Mrs Jacobs?
Victor Hobie is not a very nice man, but you can rest assured that Jack deals with him as only Jack can. Boris
The Visitor By Lee Child
Ex-army high-flying career women are being murdered and dumped in baths full of green army-issue camouflage paint. Jack Reacher knew them both and is suspected by FBI profiler Julia Lamarr as being the killer. Unwillingly he finds himself helping a FBI team find the real killer to prove his innocence. Paired with attractive agent Lisa Harper, they are soon on the trail as the bodies mount up. Reacher finds that the victims have a common link. They were all subjected to sexual harassment whilst in the army. In his private life Reacher has a problem to deal with and also has to protect Jodie, his girlfriend from Petrosian, a vicious gangster. Tensions mount to a dramatic ending as the latest potential victim waits for the visitor to call.
Jack finds himself suspected of murdering high-flying ex-army career women in this one. We know he didn’t do it! Boris
Without Fail by Lee Child
Jack Reacher agrees to help guard the Vice-President of the United States following a request from a former girlfriend of his late brother Joe. Jacks finds himself well in the line of fire as unknown assassins attempt to kill the man that Jack is helping to guard. All of Jack’s native cunning as well as his own ‘Dirty Harry’ style are required as ghosts from his past, as well as some the Vice-President had long forgotten come back to haunt them both. Will Jack and his more than able assistant Neagley win through as they race against time to stop the assassins? Boris knows.
Jack Reacher guarding a politician? It can’t be true! It is! Boris
Die Trying by Lee Child
An act of chivalry places Jack Reacher and Holly Johnson, the woman he aids in deadly danger. Taken captive and chained together, they are taken 2000 miles across the USA to a Montana militia stronghold, where the group’s leader is plotting against the government. Why is Holly Johnson so vital to his plan? Who is she? She claims to be a FBI agent, but why is everyone so desperate to get her back safely? Jack Reacher finds out Holly’s true identity and the race is on not only to save her, but to save the thousands of innocent lives that will be lost if the Militia group’s insane plan comes to fruition. Filled with non-stop action and great suspense, epic hero Jack Reacher has to pull out all the stops if he is to triumph.
Will Jack Reacher win through or will he die trying? Boris Knows. Will you? Boris
Echo Burning by Lee Child
Hitching a ride in a Cadillac with the beautiful Carmen lands Jack Reacher in a whole lot of trouble.The beautiful rich young woman is in fear of her life for her husband is about to be released from Jail and apparently has a very good reason to kill her. Jack as always can never resist a damsel in distress and goes with her to the family ranch. Then her husband’s lawyer is killed and not long after his release her husband too is killed too and Carmen is in the frame for his murder. Jack thinks she’s innocent, but will need all his skills to find the real killer and the reason why.
Just goes to show that you shouldn’t accept lifts off strangers, no matter how beautiful they are! Boris. Boris
Persuader by Lee Child
When Jack Reacher sees a face from the past that he thought he’d never see again a chain of events is set in motion that lead Jack into taking the law into his own hands. Francis Xavier Quinn should have been dead, but he’s very much alive and he was the worst guy that Jack had ever met. Then Jack witnesses a brutal attempt to kidnap a terrified young student on a New England Campus. A cop is killed and Jack doesn’t wait around to explain it was an accident. The student’s father is in a business that doesn’t want the law poking around and so Jack is hired without question. Has the chance of personal revenge clouded Jack’s Judgement and has he lost his sense of right and wrong?
Boris thought that this was Jack’s darkest hour yet and it kept him gripped to the very last page. Boris
One Shot by Lee Child
When a call from help comes from James Barr, a man Jack Reacher thought would never, ever, ask him for help, Jack decides to find out what is going on. James Barr has been accused of slaying five people in a Friday night massacre which horrified a heartland city. Jack knows all about James Barr and what happened in Kuwait City back in 1991 and threatened James that the events there must never be repeated. Before Jack can see the suspected psychopath, a prison fight leaves Barr in a coma. No problem, as as far as Jack is concerned the evidence against Barr is irrefutable and it is a ‘slam dunk’ case. Something bugs Jack however, the matter of a payment made for parking and is someone taking steps to have Jack well out of the way?
Boris didn’t put this one down until he’d read every page. Boris
The Hard Way by Lee Child
Reacher was just minding his own business enjoying a cup of coffee, when he unknowingly witnesses a kidnapping. Edward Lane, husband of the kidnapped woman and her daughter asks Reacher to track the kidnappers down. Lane has his own security business involved in shady dealings and Reacher figures someone has a grudge against him, which seems confirmed when Reacher finds out that Lane’s first wife was kidnapped and killed. Looking into Lane’s murky past however, Reacher learns the truth about both kidnappings and finds out the hard way that things are never what they seem.
This the one that Reacher finally gets to go to England in and Boris thoroughly recommends it. Boris
Bad Luck And Trouble by Lee Child
‘You do not mess with the Special Investigators’ was the motto of Jack Reacher’s former army unit. They always watched each others backs and when a 1030 is sent Reacher’s way as in the old days he rapidly responds. One of the old unit has turned up dead in the California desert and others have gone missing. Joining up with Frances Neagley, the pair start to investigate why someone would want to kill Calvin Franz by throwing him out of an airplane and why have Tony Swan, Jorge Sanchez and Manuel Orozco also gone missing. Searching for leads to the disappearance of Tony Swan, former assistant security director of a high tech firm, Jack and Frances are joined by two more members of their old team, Karla Dixon & Dave O’Donnell. As they uncover more leads on the mystery deaths as by now the death toll is rising it all appears to be pointing in the direction of New Age Defense Systems, the firm Tony Swan worked for , but someone wants them all dead and Jack & co soon have the fight of their lives on their hands.
Lee Child has long been one of Boris favourite writers and his books just seem to get better and better. Boris
Killing Floor by Lee Child
This is the first of the Jack Reacher novels and finds Jack newly out of the army and out on the road drifting from town to town as he tours his native land. Jack really shouldn’t have gone to Margrave, a sleepy little town in the Georgia Sunbelt for within hours of arriving there, he is arrested and accused of murder. His nightmare continues when he finds himself spending the weekend amongst lifers on the killing floor of the local jail. When the murder victim turns out to be Jack’s brother who he’s not seen in years, Jack’s determined to find his killer and also find out what it is about the too perfect town of Margrave and the mysterious Foundation which runs the place. With his life in danger and little clues to go on Jack Reacher sets about the task as only Jack can do.
Nothing To Lose by Lee Child
Jack Reacher is in Colorado, walking from the small town of Hope to the next one, called Despair. Arriving there he tries to buy a cup of coffee, but the good folks of Despair don’t like strangers. Soon four redneck deputies appear on the scene and Jack is arrested for vagrancy. Those who know Reacher well, also know that that is the wrong thing to do and only makes Jack determined to find out what it is the townsfolk are hiding. Returning to Hope, Reacher rents a room then sets off for Despair again and reconnoitres the metal recycling plant there, the biggest in Colorado and main employer for the town. Not being able to get inside the plant Reacher starts out back for Hope, which is when he finds a body. What is going on in Despair? Read & find out.
The Enemy by Lee Child
Anyone knew to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels should read this novel first, Boris did and he then read all of the rest. The novel tells of Jack’s career in the US Military Police and opens on New Year’s day 1990. Jack is the duty Military Police officer on a base in North Carolina when a soldier’s body is discovered in a sleazy motel. The soldier is no ordinary grunt and turns out to be top ranking General Kramer who seems to be on some sort of secret mission. The plot thickens when Jack goes to tell the General’s wife of her husbands death and finds her dead too with her head caved in. Jack being Jack, he decides to set out to find out why she has been murdered. He soon finds out that senior officers don’t want the truth to be revealed and that a murky cover up is rapidly being put in place. Jack’s career is on the line, but then he always felt that the truth was more important.
This book was so good that I managed to persuade Mrs Boris to buy me three more Jack Reacher novels. Boris
Back To Boris’ Thrillers? Click Here
Another brilliant novel which Boris thoroughly enjoyed. Well plotted & well written, Lee Child never disappoints. Boris