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.