Dell Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

goed boek, fijn om te lezen

Produto novo, mas chegou com marcas na capa. Comprei esperando receber um livro em perfeito estado, porém a capa apresenta diversos riscos e marcas, como se o exemplar tivesse sido mal armazenado ou manuseado. Não vou devolver, mas deixo registrada minha insatisfação. Produto vendido como novo deveria chegar em condições impecáveis.

Yes Lee Child/Reacher puts you on hold - nothing else counts :)).

Never Go Back isn't the best Jack Reacher thriller but it isn't the worst either. Fourteen novels into the series, some of Reacher's tics are becoming too noticeable -in this novel, his fascination with numbers and his use of the coin flip metaphor for making a choice in a situation where the odds can't be calculated. And the ending of this novel, though it makes sense, is a bit flat. But other than those, Never Go Back is a perfectly enjoyable action thriller and Reacher an intriguing hero.In a retrospective preface to the paperback reissue of the first Reacher novel, Killing Floor, 1997, Child tells how he decided what Reacher would look like and what skills he would have: he would be oversized big, muscled and fit and rough looking, so that any ordinary man would take a look at him and walk away, possessed of all sorts of knowledge acquired in thirteen years in the Military Police, aggressive -certainly not slow to take matters to attack when a potential threat looms--and utterly lacking "the remorse gene. It just wasn't there." (Quote from The Hard Way, 2006) Fourteen novels in, Reacher is still an interesting character, more than just an attack machine, a man with complicated tastes in some areas though drastically simplified in others, and determined to lead his life his own way. Reacher would scorn most survivalists as dogmatists, but I suspect survivalists would find him a very appealing hero, perhaps matched only by Stephen Hunter's sniper hero, Bob Lee Swagger.One of the things Child has done consistently since his first novel is to set the scene for explosive violence in the very first chapter. Once you've read the first chapter of a Reacher novel, it's hard not to continue, and this novel is no exception. (Child is one of the few authors whose novels I read from start to finish as soon as I get them. Dick Francis was another, also Donald Westlake writing as `Richard Stark" and Robert Crais's Joe Pike novels for a long time Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels. There are mystery and action thrillers who are their equals but they draw me in from the first page and I can't put them down until I'm done with them.) In this novel, it's an encounter with two fit young men, obviously military from their botched brutal haircuts, who come to `persuade' Reacher to leave town. Push comes to shove, and Reacher demolishes both in a scene of precise and controlled violence, graphically told. There's a little too much revealed wisdom about attack strategies and what they do to the human body. It's extraneous to the central flow of action. But who cares? I read it any way and enjoyed those passages as well as the action scene, and two and a half hours, finally put down the book, having read it from start to finish without a break.I haven't talked about plot yet, because plot is the lesser partner in all of the novels in this series. Not that Child doesn't plot well. He -usually--does but plot is just a hanger on which he dresses the clothes of Reacher's character and actions. Reacher needs a dire situation to react against.In this case, Reacher travels to northeast Virginia, the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP. He's stopping by to meet the head of the unit he used to supervise. She's major Susan Turner, and if they get along as well face to face as they did on the phone, he intends to ask her out to dinner before he heads on his way to his next destination, which is who knows where.But she isn't there. Behind her desk is an officious colonel (too high in rank for the post) who tells Reacher that (1) Turner is being held for taking a bribe and (2) Reacher's being recalled into the Army to face charges (a) for beating a suspect to near death sixteen years ago and (b) for a personal charge. Reacher ends up not having one, but two Army appointed attorneys (JAGs) as defense attorneys in the unrelated (but highly coincidental) charges. From that point on, things steadily grow worse. Soon, Reacher and major Turne are on the run from the Army, the FBI, the DC Metro police, and four unidentified hooligans who have an interest in terminating their activities, if not their lives.Yes, this is formula fiction. And yes, at times, it seems a bit stale, even old. It happens with series heroes. But still it works. I wouldn't recommend a new reader of this series to start with this installment of the Jack Reacher saga but it kept me occupied for three full hours and I don't regret it a bit.

Perfect