The Hard Way

I'm one of the few people on the planet who've never read a Lee Child novel. Or was. The derring-do genre just doesn't interest me. Never has really.

But I saw a copy of his novel The Hard Way on a Quick Pik shelf at the library and decided to give it a try. The man is a master. I kept finding excuses to go back to it when I should have been doing something else.

Once I realized it wasn't going to be gritty in the style I prefer, I was able to appreciate the stunning way he plots, creates cliff-hangers and paints nightmare pictures of New York that harken back to Bob Kane's original Batman stories.

In The Hard Way Reacher is hired by a mysterious man named Lane whose wife and young daughter have been kidnapped. Nothing is at it seems, of course, not Lane, not the kidnappers and not even Reacher who has to keep shifting his plans every time he learns that just about everybody involved is lying to him.

I'm still not much for derring-do. But'm glad I have a whole lot of other Lee Child novels to read.