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Persuader
Cover of Persuader
Persuader
by Lee Child
Borrow Borrow
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING JACK REACHER SERIES • The inspiration for season three of the hit streaming series Reacher

“Gripping and suspenseful . . . Child ratchets up the suspense to new heights.”—The Denver Post
 
Jack Reacher lives for the moment. Without a home. Without commitment. And with a burning desire to right wrongs—and rewrite his own agonizing past. DEA Susan Duffy is living for the future, knowing that she has made a terrible mistake by putting one of her own female agents into a death trap within a heavily guarded Maine mansion.
 
Staging a brilliant ruse, Reacher hurtles into the dark heart of a vast criminal enterprise. Trying to rescue an agent whose time is running out, Reacher enters a crime lord’s waterfront fortress. There he will find a world of secrecy and violence—and confront some unfinished business from his own past.
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING JACK REACHER SERIES • The inspiration for season three of the hit streaming series Reacher

“Gripping and suspenseful . . . Child ratchets up the suspense to new heights.”—The Denver Post
 
Jack Reacher lives for the moment. Without a home. Without commitment. And with a burning desire to right wrongs—and rewrite his own agonizing past. DEA Susan Duffy is living for the future, knowing that she has made a terrible mistake by putting one of her own female agents into a death trap within a heavily guarded Maine mansion.
 
Staging a brilliant ruse, Reacher hurtles into the dark heart of a vast criminal enterprise. Trying to rescue an agent whose time is running out, Reacher enters a crime lord’s waterfront fortress. There he will find a world of secrecy and violence—and confront some unfinished business from his own past.
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Awards-
Excerpts-
  • Chapter One Chapter One

    The cop climbed out of his car exactly four minutes before he got shot. He moved like he knew his fate in advance. He pushed the door against the resistance of a stiff hinge and swiveled slowly on the worn vinyl seat and planted both feet flat on the road. Then he grasped the door frame with both hands and heaved himself up and out. He stood in the cold clear air for a second and then turned and pushed the door shut again behind him. Held still for a second longer. Then he stepped forward and leaned against the side of the hood up near the headlight.

    The car was a seven-year-old Chevy Caprice. It was black and had no police markings. But it had three radio antennas and plain chrome hubs. Most cops you talk to swear the Caprice is the best police vehicle ever built. This guy looked like he agreed with them. He looked like a veteran plain-clothes detective with the whole of the motor pool at his disposal. Like he drove the ancient Chevy because he wanted to. Like he wasn’t interested in the new Fords. I could see that kind of stubborn old-timer personality in the way he held himself. He was wide and bulky in a plain dark suit made from some kind of heavy wool. He was tall but stooped. An old man. He turned his head and looked north and south along the road and then craned his thick neck to glance back over his shoulder at the college gate. He was thirty yards away from me.

    The college gate itself was purely a ceremonial thing. Two tall brick pillars just rose up from a long expanse of tended lawn behind the sidewalk. Connecting the pillars was a high double gate made from iron bars bent and folded and twisted into fancy shapes. It was shiny black. It looked like it had just been repainted. It was probably repainted after every winter. It had no security function. Anybody who wanted to avoid it could drive straight across the lawn. It was wide open, anyway. There was a driveway behind it with little knee-high iron posts set eight feet back on either side. They had latches. Each half of the gate was latched into one of them. Wide open. The driveway led on down to a huddle of mellow brick buildings about a hundred yards away. The buildings had steep mossy roofs and were overhung by trees. The driveway was lined with trees. The sidewalk was lined with trees. There were trees everywhere. Their leaves were just about coming in. They were tiny and curled and bright green. Six months from now they would be big and red and golden and photographers would be swarming all over the place taking pictures of them for the college brochure.

    Twenty yards beyond the cop and his car and the gate was a pickup truck parked on the other side of the road. It was tight against the curb. It was facing toward me, fifty yards away. It looked a little out of place. It was faded red and had a big bull bar on the front. The bar was dull black and looked like it had been bent and straightened a couple of times. There were two men in the cab. They were young, tall, clean-cut, fair-haired. They were just sitting there, completely still, gazing forward, looking at nothing in particular. They weren’t looking at the cop. They weren’t looking at me.

    I was set up to the south. I had an anonymous brown panel van parked outside a music store. The store was the kind of place you find near a college gate. It had used CDs in racks out on the sidewalk and posters in the windows behind them advertising bands people have never heard of. I had the van’s rear doors open. There were boxes stacked inside. I had a sheaf of paperwork in my hands. I was wearing a coat, because it was a cold April morning. I was wearing gloves, because the boxes in...
About the Author-
  • Lee Child is the author of more than two dozen New York Times bestselling Jack Reacher thrillers, with most having reached the #1 position, and the #1 bestselling complete Jack Reacher story collection, No Middle Name. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in one hundred territories. A native of England and a former television director, Lee Child lives in New York City and Wyoming.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from March 10, 2003
    The promo copy on the ARC of Child's new thriller proclaims, "We dare to make this claim: Lee Child is the best thriller writer you're probably not reading—yet." Hopefully the "six-figure" marketing campaign promised by Child's new publisher will make that statement obsolete, because readers will be hard-pressed to find a more engaging thriller this spring season. Child is a master of storytelling skills, not least the plot twist, and the opening chapter of this novel spins a doozy, as a high-octane, extremely violent action sequence sees Child hero Jack Reacher rescue a young man, 20-year-old Richard Beck, from an attempted kidnapping before the rug is pulled out from under the reader with the chapter's last line. The rest of the novel centers on the Beck family's isolated, heavily guarded estate on the Maine coast where Reacher takes Richard. Richard's father is suspected by Feds of being a major drug dealer and the kidnapper of another Fed, and also seems to have ties to a fiend who killed Reacher's lady 10 years before, someone Reacher thought he'd killed in turn, in a vengeance slaying. Tension runs high, then extremely high, as Reacher, ingratiating himself with the dealer and hired on as a bodyguard, pokes around the estate, looking for the kidnapped Fed and evading and/or disposing of in-house bad guys as they begin to suspect he's not who he seems. But then little in Child's novels is as it at first seems, and numerous further plot twists spark the story line. What makes the novel really zing, though, is Reacher's narration—a unique mix of the brainy and the brutal, of strategic thinking and explosive action, moral rumination and ruthless force, marking him as one of the most memorable heroes in contemporary thrillerdom. Any thriller fan who has yet to read Lee Child should start now. (May 13)Forecast:The publisher is aiming at Father's Day sales, and with the help of a massive campaign, including print, radio and airline advertising, Child could be poised to reap the sort of sales he deserves.

  • Library Journal

    April 1, 2003
    A cross between a modern-day John Wayne and a much younger Clint Eastwood, Jack Reacher is back in this eighth adventure, and fans will be delighted. A retired army major who served as an MP and criminal investigator, Reacher roams the United States and invariably runs across a major crime or terrorist incident that requires him to "put things right," albeit in his own unique and violent way. Here he discovers a diabolical enemy whom he thought a decade dead, as well as a major smuggler and his sadistic bodyguard living in a gothic horror of a mansion overlooking the sea. Reacher allies himself with a band of FBI agents who want to bring down the bad guys and find one of their own who's missing. Persuader includes a number of intriguing plot twists, and Reacher always finds himself in tense, tight, and exciting situations. Intelligently written, Child's latest thriller is recommended for most popular fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/03.]-Robert Conroy, Warren, MI

    Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Booklist

    Starred review from March 15, 2003
    The word " thriller" is too often used as a kind of catchall, encompassing a wildly diverse group of novels that aren't mysteries exactly but that do generate suspense. Rather than this kitchen-sink approach, why not limit the term to those rare novels that, in fact, deliver thrills, books fueled by a propulsive narrative that compels the reader forward, all systems on overdrive from beginning to end? Stephen Hunter's Bob the Nailer novels are the perfect example of this special breed, but Child's Jake Reacher series can match Bob stride for stride. Child has a new publisher committed to bringing the Reacher series, now in its seventh installment, the crossover success it has long deserved, and fortunately, the book they've picked to do it with is a corker. Beginning with a stunning set-piece involving the apparent kidnapping of a college student, the novel offers the brooding Reacher, a former military policeman, the chance to settle a score with an old nemesis, renegade army intelligence officer Quinn, whom Reacher believed was dead until a chance encounter on a Boston street. Using his old sources to verify Quinn's identity, Reacher finds himself in the middle of an FBI investigation of shady tycoon Zachary Beck. The best thrillers run on high-octane narrative fuel, but they are not plot driven. To generate real thrills, an author must put real people behind the wheel, and Child does exactly that. Reacher may grow from type--the tough-guy loner, wounded and trying unsuccessfully to disengage--but he brings his own sinewy presence to the role. Bones crunch, wounds bleed, and hearts break in this galvanizing tale, but they never do so generically, and the mayhem, both physical and emotional, never feels gratuitous.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)

  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from May 1, 2003
    The promo copy on the ARC of Child's new thriller proclaims, "We dare to make this claim: Lee Child is the best thriller writer you're probably not reading-yet." Hopefully the "six-figure" marketing campaign promised by Child's new publisher will make that statement obsolete, because readers will be hard-pressed to find a more engaging thriller this spring season. Child is a master of storytelling skills, not least the plot twist, and the opening chapter of this novel spins a doozy, as a high-octane, extremely violent action sequence sees Child hero Jack Reacher rescue a young man, 20-year-old Richard Beck, from an attempted kidnapping before the rug is pulled out from under the reader with the chapter's last line. The rest of the novel centers on the Beck family's isolated, heavily guarded estate on the Maine coast where Reacher takes Richard. Richard's father is suspected by Feds of being a major drug dealer and the kidnapper of another Fed, and also seems to have ties to a fiend who killed Reacher's lady 10 years before, someone Reacher thought he'd killed in turn, in a vengeance slaying. Tension runs high, then extremely high, as Reacher, ingratiating himself with the dealer and hired on as a bodyguard, pokes around the estate, looking for the kidnapped Fed and evading and/or disposing of in-house bad guys as they begin to suspect he's not who he seems. But then little in Child's novels is as it at first seems, and numerous further plot twists spark the story line. What makes the novel really zing, though, is Reacher's narration-a unique mix of the brainy and the brutal, of strategic thinking and explosive action, moral rumination and ruthless force, marking him as one of the most memorable heroes in contemporary thrillerdom. Any thriller fan who has yet to read Lee Child should start now. (May 13) Forecast: The publisher is aiming at Father's Day sales, and with the help of a massive campaign, including print, radio and airline advertising, Child could be poised to reap the sort of sales he deserves.

  • Library Journal

    January 15, 2003
    Jack Reacher has a problem; he's after a drug dealer tied to a man he once killed-or maybe he didn't. A tough seventh case.

    Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Daily News (NY) "Reacher is a modern-day Shane.... [and Lee Child] is known as the master of the plot twist."
  • Seattle Times "Spectacular."
  • The New York Times "Terrific...swift and brutal."
  • Michael Connelly "What a page-turner should be."
  • Houston Chronicle "Bang-on suspense."
  • Boston Globe "The best-written, best-plotted, best in just about every way..."
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