Category Archives: Lee Child

Review: Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

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Title: Gone Tomorrow

Author: Lee Child

Publisher: Bantam [2009]

ISBN: 978-0-593-05704-9

Length: 441 pages

It is late night/early morning. Jack Reacher is on a New York subway train. He spots a woman he thinks is a suicide bomber. He decides to talk to her. This action sets off a trail of unexpected events.

The short sentences in that synopsis are similar to the writing style in this book. The mostly short sentences are full of details about some things (e.g. gun models and fight sequences) but no details about other things (e.g. the people). The story unfolds via a series of events which happen so quickly that, apparently, there’s no time for anyone to display an emotion or reveal much in the way of motivation. Even the sex is rapid and seemingly as uninteresting to the participants as it was to me.

I know thrillers generally focus more on plot than character development but this one takes that to an extreme. Reacher is a character about whom we know virtually nothing: he’s ex-army, has big feet, has no home and possesses only 9 things all of which he can carry with him. I haven’t read any of the previous 12 novels in the series but I’m prepared to bet no one who has knows much more about Reacher than this as it would be appear to be a feature of the series. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that approach but it just didn’t appeal to me. I like to read not only about what people are doing but why they are doing it and Gone Tomorrow had almost none of that second element. The result was a book I simply didn’t connect with at all.

For me reading this book is like the meal you eat when you’ve got 20 minutes to spare at work and you bolt down a sandwich while checking your emails: it quells the hunger pangs but you barely taste it and wouldn’t be able to describe it to someone the next day if your life depended on it. I read this book on a leisurely interstate train trip in what was basically a single sitting but if you ask me in a week what happened I doubt I’ll be able to recall 3 distinct things about the book.

My rating 2/5

Other stuff

Although the book isn’t for me many others enjoyed the tale including Mack from Mack Captures Crime

Review: The Chopin Manuscript by various authors

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Title: The Chopin Manuscriptchopin manuscript

Author: Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Lisa Scottoline,Joseph Finder, David Hewson, James Grady, S. J. Rozan, Erica Spindler, John Ramsey Miller, David Corbett, John Gilstrap, Jim Fusilli, Peter Spiegelman, Ralph Pezzullo and P. J. Parrish

Publisher: Audible Inc and the International Thriller Writers Association [2007]

ISBN: N/A (Digital Download via audible.com)

Length: 6hours 30minutes (plus an hour of ‘extras’)

Narrator: Alfred Molina

American Harold Middleton is a music professor and former war crimes investigator who is called to Poland to assess whether or not a manuscript purported to be an original, previously undiscovered, Chopin is genuine or a fake. However, the man that Harold meets with is murdered soon after their meeting and it soon becomes clear that there is more to the manuscript than mere rarity.

For what is essentially a publishing gimmick the book is delightfully entertaining. The plot rollicks along with red herrings and shocking twists aplenty, just as a good thriller should. The only evidence that the story is written by 15 different people is that there are perhaps a few more characters than normal, but the upside to that is that there are more genuine surprises than you might expect with a book authored by a sole writer who has pet characters and plot threads. There are several themes which are carried throughout the book, such as the role of music, and these help to produce a surprisingly cohesive story.

None of the characters are particularly well developed, there are too many and the book too short for that, but as this is a book all about a fast paced plot that’s not a huge turnoff on this occasion. There was enough information to glean about Harold, his daughter Charlie, the evil Faust and a few of the other characters to engage my interest and keep me listening.

The book is narrated by actor Alfred Molina who does a superb job of handling the dialogue-rich story which features a couple of dozen characters.

My rating 3.5/5

Other stuff

The download version of the book that I listened to contained a half-hour interview with Jeffrey Deaver, Lee Child and David Hewson discussing the writing of the book. I found this quite enlightening. Following that are the winning entries in an International Thriller Writers competition which required people to take the first paragraph of The Chopin Manuscript and write a short story. The story by Colin Cotteril was particularly enjoyable and quite a treat to find tucked at the end of the audio file.

I couldn’t find any evidence that the book is available in print format although there is a version available for the kindle.