GONE TOMORROW: A Reacher Novel
Lee Child
Delacorte Press
Thriller
ISBN: 9780385340571
Everyone who has read Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books has a favorite. Mine happens to be the newly published GONE TOMORROW, and there are a number of reasons for this. For one, the novel is set in New York City, where Reacher, at least for me, seems to be at his best. Another is that the always self-assured Reacher reveals a side and quantity to his wit and wisdom heretofore unseen. A third is the nuggets of information about New York that are dropped appropriately and generously throughout the book. And then, of course, there is the story, which is perhaps the most interesting and complex tale with which Child has graced us to date.
GONE TOMORROW begins with Reacher on the subway, undertaking the first leg of a journey to take him out of town. We learn soon enough that his entire reason for being in the city was to visit some Bleecker Street clubs and listen to music. But his travels are interrupted when he spots a woman who meets almost all the criteria for a suicide bomber (the criteria list, if you haven’t seen it, is worth the price of admission all by itself). When he approaches her and attempts to quietly and civilly ascertain her intentions, she shoots herself. Suddenly, Reacher is a person of interest in the eyes of a number of different groups of people.
First are the two officers investigating the death of the woman, whose name is Susan Mark. The police are almost immediately followed by a trio of nameless federal agents from an unidentified federal agency. Next are a quartet of gentlemen from a private investigator’s office that does not exist, as Reacher soon finds out. Then there is the brother of the unfortunate Mark, a cop from a small town in New Jersey who cannot believe that his sister committed suicide. While each group seeks information from Reacher, it is Reacher who manages to extract a crumb, a thread, or a nugget of information regarding Mark, and the events that led to her killing herself on a New York subway train, alone and far from home.
Reacher soon ferrets out two vital pieces of information: Mark knew something about John Sansom, an up-and-coming Senatorial candidate from North Carolina, and she was in New York to meet with a woman named Lila Hoth, a foreign national who was waiting for that information, supposedly with benign and benevolent intent. Everyone (except for the police and Mark’s brother) is lying to Reacher, as they all think that Reacher knows more than he actually does. What develops is that Mark was in possession of a memory stick containing documentation of an incident that occurred decades before and could cause some earth-shaking, and world-changing, embarrassment to a number of people for different reasons.
Reacher, for his part, is initially compelled to find out why Mark killed herself in front of him. His private investigation leads him from Manhattan to Washington, D.C. and back again, down streets that are on and off the beaten path and into buildings that few if anyone ever notice. Everybody is playing for keeps; when Reacher learns the what, the why and the who behind Mark’s suicide, however, the matter becomes intensely personal for him, and he unleashes himself in a manner rarely seen thus far in the series.
There are some nice touches throughout GONE TOMORROW, brilliant in their simplicity. A loner who is always on the move (though not on the run), Reacher has let technology pass him by. One scenario involves Reacher needing to avoid a spot of trouble by turning off the ringer on a cellular phone, something he does not know how to do. Another displays his unfamiliarity with playing a DVD on a computer, a mildly amusing vignette that sets up a stark contrast for what follows. Whatever Reacher lacks in technological familiarity, however, he more than makes up for in urban knowledge. His apparently encyclopedic knowledge of the city, encompassing information that is useful as well as that which only seems to be trivial, serves him well, especially near the end of the book, when Reacher pulls off a neat trick that had me howling as much from its execution as from its truly brilliant setup. Then there is the ticking clock of the plot, which starts at the beginning and gets louder and louder, even as there is some misdirection as to what the clock actually is, and where.
The best part of GONE TOMORROW, though, is the mystery behind all that occurs, a puzzle that Reacher slowly and painstakingly unravels while on his way to a climax that is stunning in its violence yet brutally satisfying. Both Reacher and Child are at their best here.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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