Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel - Hardcover

Child, Lee

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804178747 ISBN 13: 9780804178747

Verlag: Penguin Random House, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

No. 1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Jack Reacher returns in the latest fast-moving, action-packed, suspenseful book from Lee Child.

You can leave the army, but the army doesn't leave you. Not always. Not completely, notes Jack Reacher - and sure enough, the retired military cop is soon pulled back into service. This time, for the State Department and the CIA.

Someone has taken a shot at the president of France in the City of Light. The bullet was American. The distance between the gunman and the target was exceptional. How many snipers can shoot from three-quarters of a mile with total confidence? Very few, but John Kott - an American marksman gone bad - is one of them. And after fifteen years in prison, he's out, unaccounted for, and likely drawing a bead on a G-8 summit packed with enough world leaders to tempt any assassin.

If anyone can stop Kott, it's the man who beat him before: Reacher. And though he'd rather work alone, Reacher is teamed with Casey Nice, a rookie analyst who keeps her cool with Zoloft. But they're facing a rough road, full of ruthless mobsters, Serbian thugs, close calls, double-crosses - and no backup if they're caught. All the while Reacher can't stop thinking about the woman he once failed to save. But he won't let that that happen again. Not this time. Not Nice.

Reacher never gets too close. But now a killer is making it personal.

Praise for Personal

"The best one yet." - Stephen King

Praise for No. 1 bestselling author Lee Child and his Jack Reacher series

"Welcome to the relentless world of Jack Reacher and his impressive tendency to be in the wrong place at the right time. . . . Child has created an iconic character that other thriller writers try to emulate but don't come close to matching." - Associated Press

"The Reacher novels are easily the best thriller series going." - NPR

"Child is a superb craftsman of suspense." - Entertainment Weekly

"The truth about Reacher gets better and better." - Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"If you're a thriller fan and you're not reading the Reacher series, you're not a thriller fan." - Chicago Tribune

"[A] feverishly thrilling series . . . with Child, you can always count on furious action." - The Miami Herald

"Irresistible Reacher remains just about the best butt-kicker in thriller-lit." - Kirkus Reviews

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lee Child is the author of nineteen New York Times bestselling Jack Reacher thrillers, ten of which have reached the #1 position. All have been optioned for major motion pictures; the first,Jack Reacher, was based on One Shot. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in almost a hundred territories. A native of England and a former television director, Lee Child lives in New York City.

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Chapter 1

Eight days ago my life was an up and down affair. Some of it good. Some of it not so good. Most of it uneventful. Long slow periods of nothing much, with occasional bursts of something. Like the army itself. Which is how they found me. You can leave the army, but the army doesn't leave you. Not always. Not completely.

They started looking two days after some guy took a shot at the president of France. I saw it in the paper. A long--range attempt with a rifle. In Paris. Nothing to do with me. I was six thousand miles away, in California, with a girl I met on a bus. She wanted to be an actor. I didn't. So after forty--eight hours in LA she went one way and I went the other. Back on the bus, first to San Francisco for a couple of days, and then to Portland, Oregon, for three more, and then onward to Seattle. Which took me close to Fort Lewis, where two women in uniform got out of the bus. They left an Army Times behind, one day old, right there on the seat across the aisle.

The Army Times is a strange old paper. It started up before World War Two and is still going strong, every week, full of yesterday's news and sundry how--to articles, like the headline staring up at me right then: New Rules! Changes for Badges and Insignia! Plus Four More Uniform Changes On The Way! Legend has it the news is yesterday's because it's copied secondhand from old AP summaries, but if you read the words sideways you sometimes hear a real sardonic tone between the lines. The editorials are occasionally brave. The obituaries are occasionally interesting.

Which was my sole reason for picking up the paper. Sometimes people die and you're happy about it. Or not. Either way you need to know. But I never found out. Because on the way to the obituaries I found the personal ads. Which as always were mostly veterans looking for other veterans. Dozens of ads, all the same.

Including one with my name in it.

Right there, center of the page, a boxed column inch, five words printed bold: Jack Reacher call Rick Shoemaker .

Which had to be Tom O'Day's work. Which later on made me feel a little lame. Not that O'Day wasn't a smart guy. He had to be. He had survived a long time. A very long time. He had been around forever. Twenty years ago he already looked a hundred. A tall, thin, gaunt, cadaverous man, who moved like he might collapse at any moment, like a broken stepladder. He was no one's idea of an army general. More like a professor. Or an anthropologist. Certainly his thinking had been sound. Reacher stays under the radar, which means buses and trains and waiting rooms and diners, which, coincidentally or not, are the natural economic habitat for enlisted men and women, who buy the Army Times ahead of any other publication in the PX, and who can be relied upon to spread the paper around, like birds spread seeds from berries .

And he could rely on me to pick up the paper. Somewhere. Sooner or later. Eventually. Because I needed to know. You can leave the army, but the army doesn't leave you. Not completely. As a means of communication, as a way of making contact, from what he knew, and from what he could guess, then maybe he would think ten or twelve consecutive weeks of personal ads might generate a small but realistic chance of success.

But it worked the first time out. One day after the paper was printed. Which is why I felt lame later on.

I was predictable.

Rick Shoemaker was Tom O'Day's boy. Probably his second in command by now. Easy enough to ignore. But I owed Shoemaker a favor. Which O'Day knew about, obviously. Which was why he put Shoemaker's name in his ad.

And which was w

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Random House
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804178747
• ISBN 13: 9780804178747
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar