Review: A Wanted Man (Audio Book & Hardback)

At the time of writing this review, Lee Child has eight books in the Amazon Thriller top 100 charts. The reason for this is simple, his books are extremely good. In my fourteen years reading his Reacher Thrllers I've only previously been disappointed by one ending and struggled reading one other.

Just as 'Worth Dying For' followed directly on from the end of '61 Hours', 'A Wanted Man' literally starts one van ride after 'Worth Dying For', where Reacher got pretty badly beaten up. He's heading to Virginia, so he sticks out his thumb, wipes the blood from his face and looks hopeful. Everybody passes him by, until good fortune smiles and a car with two men and a woman in the back stop. But this isn't the warm reprieve from the cold elements Reacher was hoping for. There's been a murder in a nearby town and the police are hunting for two men.

The first third of A Wanted Man plays much like any other Reacher novel. The story unfolds and gets increasingly complex, not only playing out through Reacher's perceptions in the car but also through the eyes of FBI and local police investigators. Child's unique viewpoint sucks us in. Reacher spends a lot of time in the car but it doesn't matter. The plotting is tight, the writing captivating. Then about a third of the way through we get a major turning point, a car is burning on a remote track. And then the story completely unwound for me.

Even now having finished listening to the Audio book and having gone back to re-read the last 100 pages of the hardback, I'm a little confused. It turns out I hadn't mis-heard or missed anything. That really was how it got resolved. The whole premise behind the story is confusingly and fleetingly explained.

Even worse was the sheer tediousness of getting through the last two thirds of the story. In contrast to the first third where the car journeys were captivating, save for some weird morse-code eye blinking, the last two thirds we're all over the place, 300 long miles in a car here and then back again, 100 long miles there. Child is usually succinct but he goes on and on. Endless descriptions of cars and their movements, mysterious FBI and CIA agents coming out of the woodwork but little context, McDonalds product placement gone crazy, car journeys so full of exposition its an act of reader devotion staying on the journey. Made worse for me by the fact the audio book read by Jeff Harding made Reacher sound like a Chicago thug.

I learned a couple of valuable lessons during the process. Even great writers can write bad books. And buying a hardback because it's cheaper than the Kindle is not good economy. In future I'll just wait for the Kindle price to come down or check out a new author.

Hope this review was helpful.