Jack Reacher (One Shot) (Jack Reacher, #9)

by Lee Child

[zooloo1983]

I finished listening to this book a month ago, so I am late in writing my review and my review I wrote originally got wiped due to a web-hosting failure!! I love listening to these on audible and I think Jeff Harding does a great service to these books when reading them as I do love the voices he puts on. (Dick Hill is still my favourite but Jeff Harding is definitely on par!) You can read these as standalone books as it is very occasionally you might get a reference to someone from a previous book but if you are like me you want to read them from the beginning to get the complete picture.

In this book, we are back with Jack being the present-day Jack. (In the last book we were seeing Jack still as an MP in the army) We are brought in to the story with a sniper attack where five people have been shot and killed but there were six shots fired. As indicated by the book title, only one shot means anything. James Barr, the sniper, is arrested for the killings but says nothing and the only words he utters are “Get Reacher”. However, Reacher is already on his way…but not to save this guy. When he arrives something doesn’t quite sit right with Reacher, and so I tried to solve the clues given (Obviously not literally!). How was James Barr so easily caught? Why was he shooting from the car park? Why all the evidence left to be found? Why only five dead?

I love how we are instantly pulled in to the world of Reacher with no preamble. Lee Child knows how to suck a reader straight in and to take you on a ride. I loved a scene near the end of the book where Reacher and his ensemble are trying to get close to a house to attack and he gets Helen (James Barr’s lawyer) to act as a decoy, I was chuckling because she was running around like a lunatic with no shoes on, on a gravel path to distract Le Zec’s men, it certainly confused them! What Reacher and Lee Child both do, is provide comical relief, I love the dry sense of humour he has. So I often find myself snorting with laughter when I am driving, probably when I should not be, due to something that was said and think, ah typical Reacher!

In this book, I noticed that Child’s loves the phrase “He said nothing” nearly every character at some point in the book said nothing. I started to play a game in the car when I was trying to guess when this phrase would come up again. I also love, in this book and every book, the detail that Mr Childs’ gives the reader to do with weapons and the military, being a soldier’s wife I bug my husband a lot to check how accurate it is and he probably gets bored of me asking lol

When looking at other reviews on this book, I had actually forgotten that this was the first Tom Cruise film as that is all the recent reviews talked about. I for one am actually quite excited to re-watch the film again since reading the book. Love to see what differences there are, apart from the glaringly obvious one being Jack Reacher himself.



Until next time Jack, until next time……