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Bestselling author Lee Child and his fictitious hero Jack Reacher are back in action. PERSUADER is Child's seventh consecutive novel about the former military man with a mysterious past. He gets into plenty of trouble when he stumbles upon a kidnapping attempt of a well-to-do college student and decides to take a closer look.
Having never read a Child novel before, I was extremely impressed at how the author wastes no time in placing the reader right into the thick of the action. From the start of the first chapter, the suspense and action never seems to slow down. With bullets flying past him, Reacher is able to safely return Richard Beck to his parents' palatial compound on an island off the coast of Maine, whereupon Reacher discovers Beck is no ordinary college student --- he's the son of affluent Oriental rug importer Zachary Beck. Without giving too much of the story away, the kidnapping that Reacher stumbles upon wasn't actually a kidnapping at all, but a staged event that Reacher and some federal agents organized to get Reacher inside the Beck fortress.
Fans of Child's Reacher novels should remember the name Francis Xavier Quinn, a former villain Reacher thought he had done away with 10 years ago, until he sees Quinn walk past him on a busy Boston street. As the story's plot continues to unravel, Child reveals that the elder Beck has somehow intertwined his life and his family in some sort of blackmailing scheme with the likes of Quinn.
Child pushes all the right buttons to convey to his audience that Reacher isn't just some washed up GI; he is a well-informed killing machine somewhat similar to the late Ian Fleming's Bond, James Bond. Reacher is well versed in the art of self defense, can handle numerous types of weapons, swims in the icy cold Atlantic Ocean and even plays a game of Russian roulette to show Beck he should be taken extremely serious. And, of course, Reacher does extremely well with the ladies as Reacher and DEA agent Susan Duffy toss aside their working relationship and dive head first into a torrid affair. Another interesting aspect about PERSUADER is how Child is able to keep the reader constantly guessing and the pages turning.
Although Child's serial character hasn't even scratched the surface in terms of popularity, like James Patterson's Alex Cross, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan or Robert B. Parker's Spencer has, the former television writer and England native undoubtedly has a following that will continue to grow with this fine new novel.
--- Reviewed by David Exum
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