Jun 08, 2016 04:28 PM
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(Updated Jun 08, 2016 04:31 PM)
Warning: This review contains spoilers!
Lee Child is the creator of many books in the Crime/Thriller genre.
The Persuader is the seventh book in the Jack Reacher series. In a dramatic start, Reacher "kills" a policeman, saves the son of a suspected criminal dealing in contraband, and returns the saved boy(Richard) back to his family.
In the process, he gains the confidence of the criminal(Zachary Beck) and thereby enters their world, convincing the latter that he is now a cop-killer and needs refuge. He offers to work as a guard to the criminal's family, especially the son. What we are privy to, but the criminal himself isn't, is that Reacher is working with law enforcement and that the entire event is a set-up.
Over the next several weeks, Reacher stays with the criminal, uncovers the latter's hidden business(officially, the guy trades in rugs and carpets, exporting his goods all over the world), and then goes about nabbing and eliminating several members of the mafia - both below and above the main criminal in whose home he has found "refuge". The story has a lot of flash-backs and twists and turns. Reacher goes about doing things that Bond-like heroes are more prone to do, and comes across as a fictional hero but with some weaknesses that make him seem more real. The writing is crisp and the story moves fast. Characters are well-delineated. I liked the characterisation of Paulie, the steroid-filled goon who works with the main criminal, but represents someone higher up - and it is this higher up, a certain Quinn, who has previously wronged Reacher and made them both enemies beyond this present case. There is a lot of technological stuff here, and knowledge about guns that might interest the tech-savvy reader. There is some romance, all unintended and not central to the story. But more than anything else, this is an action novel that one may find difficult to put down. Read the book, and I am sure you will be ready to read more of Lee Child.
