Book Review: The Hard Way by Lee Child

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The Hard Way is the quintessential Jack Reacher novel. When it was first published back in 2006, it was the tenth novel by Lee Child to feature the American ex-military policeman turned drifter and modern-day ‘knight errant’. Child’s publishing schedule had become as regular as Reacher’s inner clock (he has an uncanny knack for mentally keeping track of the passing of time even without a watch). Every year on 1 September, Child – formerly Jim Grant, a Coventry-born and Birmingham-raised lad who worked in Manchester, England for Granada TV for the best part of 20 years before being made redundant in the mid-1990s – would sit down and start writing a new novel featuring Jack Reacher. Every year, without fail (to use the title of another Reacher adventure), a new Lee Child tome would hit, and dominate, the bestseller lists. The Hard Way has all of the virtues of a classic Lee Child novel, so it seems like the ideal Jack Reacher book to review here. It is, in every sense of the word, exemplary: as a page-turner, as a satisfying thriller containing ‘lots of fisticuffs’ (in Frederick Forsyth’s endorsement) and a nail-biting denouement, and as a mystery novel. This last one is often overlooked when people are discussing Lee Child’s fiction. But The Hard Way is a reminder that, at his best, Child is a fine craftsman of a good old-fashioned mystery. The plot of The Hard Way is easy enough to summarise, though I’ll limit myself to the earlier portions of the book so I don’t give away any spoilers. Jack Reacher is in New York when he is approached by a man who has learnt that Reacher witnessed an important event the day before. Within a few chapters the situation has become clear: the wife and stepdaughter of Edward Lane, a former military man who now does freelance ‘work’ for whoever pays him, have been kidnapped. Lane is complying with the kidnappers’ ransom demands, but he wants to track down those responsible and deal with them. No police are to […]

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