Gone tomorrow*** by Lee Child
Reading dates: 08 August – 04 September 2022
Previous reviews of the Jack Reacher series
(now with publisher teasers so I remember which is which. After all, this is a research project.)
#1 Killing Floor ***
Jack Reacher gets off a bus in a small town in Georgia. And is thrown into the county jail, for a murder he didn’t commit.
#2 Die Trying ***
Reacher is locked in a van with a woman claiming to be FBI. And ferried right across America into a brand new country.
#3 Tripwire **
Reacher is digging swimming pools in Key West when a detective comes round asking questions. Then the detective turns up dead.
#4 The Visitor ***
Two naked women found dead in a bath filled with paint. Both victims of a man just like Reacher.
#5 Echo Burning ***
In the heat of Texas, Reacher meets a young woman whose husband is in jail. When he is released, he will kill her.
#6 Without Fail ****
A Washington woman asks Reacher for help. Her job? Protecting the Vice President.
#7 Persuader ****
A kidnapping in Boston. A cop dies. Has Reacher lost his sense of right and wrong?
#8 The Enemy ***
Back in Reacher’s army days. a general is found dead on his watch.
#9 One Shot *** (2012)
A lone sniper shoots five people dead in a heartland city. But the accused guy says, ‘Get Reacher’.
#10 The Hard Way ***
A coffee on a busy New York street leads to a shoot-out three thousand miles away in the Norfolk countryside.
#11 Bad Luck and Trouble ***
One of Reacher’s buddies has shown up dead in the California desert, and Reacher must put his old army unit back together.
#12 Nothing to Lose **
Reacher crosses the line between a town called Hope and one named Despair.
#14 61 hours **** (got the number of this one wrong in previous reviews)
In freezing South Dakota, Reacher hitches a lift on a bus heading for trouble.
On the New York subway, Reacher counts down the twelve tell-tale signs of a suicide bomber.
Gone Tomorrow starts off in the most promising way: who does not like ticking off items on a list? But the plot becomes more and more plausible as it goes on and by the end, instead of going out with a bang, fizzles out completely. There is some interesting New York geography, some things to be learned, and I much prefer the first person narration but overall I feel I am in a Reacher by numbers universe.
The 12 step suicide bomber spotting checklist
1. Inappropriate clothing
2. A fresh shave, resulting in paler skin on the lower half of the face
3. A robotic walk
4. Irritability
5. Sweating
6. Tics
7. Nervous behaviour
8. Breathing
9. Suicide bombers about to go into action stare rigidly ahead
10. Mumbled prayers
11. A large bag
12. Hands in the bag
Reacher wisdom
Look, don’t see, listen, don’t hear. The more you engage, the longer you survive.
The human head isn’t bolted on. It just rests there by gravity, somewhat tied down by skin and muscles and tendons and ligaments, but those insubstantial biological anchors don’t do much against the force of a violent chemical explosion. My Israeli mentor told me the easiest way to determine that an open-air attack was caused by a suicide bomber rather than by a car bomb or a package bomb is to search on an eighty- or ninety-foot radius and look for a severed human head, which is likely to be strangely intact and undamaged, even down to the opium plug in the cheek.
The best fight is the one you don’t have.
I learned that cafés and diners and coffee shops were good environments for bad news. The public atmosphere limits the likelihood of falling apart, and the process of ordering and waiting and sipping punctuates the flow of information in a way that makes it easier to absorb.
I like rats. There are a lot of myths about them. Sightings are rarer than people think. Rats are shy. Visible rats are usually young or sick or starving. They don’t bite sleeping babies’ faces for the fun of it. They’re tempted by traces of food, that’s all. Wash your kid’s mouth before you put it to bed and it’ll be OK. And there are no giant rats as big as cats. All rats are the same size.
leaving a hotel under surveillance is relatively easy to do. You do it by not doing it. By not leaving immediately. You send your bags down with the bellman in the service elevator, the agents cluster in the lobby, you leave the passenger elevator at a different floor and you hole up somewhere for two hours until the agents give up and leave. Then you walk out. It takes nerve, but it’s easy to do, especially if you have booked another room under another name
The safest way up the first half of a dog-legged staircase is to walk backwards, looking upward, with your feet spread wide. Backwards and looking upward, because if overhead resistance comes your way, you need to be facing it. Feet spread wide, because if stairs are going to creak, they’re going to creak most in the middle and least at the edges.
