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| Gone Tomorrow |
Child is a remarkable writer. Thirteen books in a series about the same character—Jack Reacher—and not a dud in the lot. Gone Tomorrow sees Reacher in New York again, on a subway train with a woman displaying all eleven tell-tales of a suicide bomber. Once again, Reacher is in the wrong place at the wrong time. It turns out that the woman worked for the Department of Defense and may have been carrying very sensitive material. Because he was there, Reacher gets questioned by everyone, which makes his attempt to actually find out what happened all the more difficult. The agencies that harass Reacher are more interested in covering it all up rather than solve the case, even to the point of locking our hero up in a secret, make-shift prison in an attempt to find out what he knows.
As always, part of the appeal of these books to me is that Reacher is a serious thinker. People underestimate him, because he looks like a brawler. Reacher, though, has such impeccable logic that it’s almost a weapon. Reacher deduces that the woman on the train with him is going to make trouble. He He deduces his way to the bad guys hideout a couple of times. But the most challenging part of this book for him is trying to deduce what the hell is going on. It’s all about stolen information, but no one will tell him what precisely was missing. As always, it’s fun to see Reacher’s mental gears in action.
Along the way, Reacher comments on how the world has become a different place since September 11. For those unfamiliar with the former Military Policeman, Reacher wanders around his country. In the first books, all he carried with him was cash and a folding toothbrush. He’s had to add an ATM card—since large wire transfers of cash are now viewed with extreme suspicion—and his passport. His way of life has just gotten harder over the last thirteen books. When he gets involved with the events that drove the woman on the subway to suicide, the alphabet agencies after him constantly use the powers granted in the Patriot Act to question him and otherwise make his life difficult. While this book isn’t all that heavy handed about it, I still got the impression that Child may be trying to make a statement about how bad things have gotten in this country.