61 Hours: (Jack Reacher 14) [Kindle Edition]

Lee had a successful career as a British television executive, until he was fired in one of the routine shake-ups that beset that industry, and headed off to America to write. Jack Reacher was the result. An ex military cop, who worked his way up through the ranks until he commanded a special operations unit. Now retired, the habits of a lifetime die hard. Rootless, and liking it that way, Reacher travels America, taking short-term contract work where he finds it - and usually ending up in the middle of a serious criminal conspiracy along the way.

Reacher, the ultimate good-guy has this habit of getting involved. He checks things out and finds them not quite right. His trained, logical mind works out connections nobody else sees, and his unique insights into human motivation raise suspicions in his mind about the otherwise unquestionably pure and honourable folks around him.

61 Hours opens with Reacher riding a bus through an ice-storm in South Dakota, when the driver crashes into a ditch, leaving the passengers stranded for a few days in a small town that depends for its survival on servicing a brand-new correctional facility a few miles out on the prairie. Things are not quite right. The police are locked into a service contract which requires every last officer to rush to the perimeter of the prison within ten minutes of a riot or escape alarm sounding.

These sporadic evacuations of the law from the town provides an ideal opportunity for serious criminal behaviour, especially when not too far away there is an abandoned air force installation (with a network of tunnels ideal for storage purposes), which happens to be occupied by a gang of bikers.

I'm not quite sure how Reacher, who travels light, manages to gain the trust of the struggling senior police officers but he seems to have the connections to get information hidden from the locals and soon all hopes depend on him - or do they? Maybe not all the officers are batting for the same side.

Its important to pay attention when reading Lee Child. He scatters clues along the way. Sometimes you realise that things don't quite add up. Other times a new revelation has you scampering back through the pages to check a clue you missed earlier. Reacher's powers of analysis equal those of Sherlock Holmes, and he is a master of predicting likelihood and calculating probability, always getting as far as he can get but often still finding that the evidence was not quite complete enough to avoid trouble - and then his other more physical attributes come into play.

I read a lot of books. Most are fairly serious, but I relax with Lee Child and also Gerald Seymour - who like Lee Child, came from the world of British television. Nobody would claim that their books are great literature or that they will become classics. But for sheer page-turning entertainment they are hard to beat.

61 Hours is a good, solid Jack Reacher novel. It's not one of the all time greats, but it's very far from being the worst either. It has momentum and unexpected twists and the tension builds slowly but steadily to a gripping ending. Lee Child seems to have taken on board some of the criticisms lobbied at his recent books. Reacher doesn't display unbelievable deductive powers, he doesn't bed any women in improbable circumstances and he doesn't always get things right.

The book is set in freezing South Dakota in the middle of a snowstorm. Reacher has hitched a ride on a bus tour of senior citizens. When the bus crashes, he finds himself in Bolton, the location for a recently built prison and headquarters for a gang of meth dealers. A drug dealer is in prison, facing trial, and the key witness is under police protection. The deputy chief of police asks Reacher to help him figure out what's going on and to keep the witness safe. From the book's outset we are counting down 61 hours to a major event, although it is some time before it becomes clear what that will be.

One of the things I particularly liked was the way that we learn more about Reacher's army background, personal history and appearance than we have to date. He develops a relationship that is his most honest and open in a long time. As usual, he is able to see things and reach conclusions that the local police can't. In the words of one character, he's "the sort of guy who sees things five seconds before the rest of the world."

Readers should be aware that this is the first Lee Child book that is not entirely self-contained. It ends with a cliff hanger and the words "to be continued". If you don't want a six month gap between installments, you may choose to wait to read this closer to the release date of the next book in September.

This has been a saviour for me for the Reacher series. I was getting slightly worried as Lee's books were becoming merely good books, with outstanding moments, rather than the norm - which was outstanding books with magnificent, heartpounding, pulse-racing moments.

I do genuinely believe that Lee has taken the criticisms and concerns that Reacher fans had, absorbed them, looked at Reacher's character and decided to go back to focusing on Reacher the character and man, instead of his near superhuman feats.

This was a totally stripped down Reacher, being unmanned by something even more fierce. The cold. This really was another dimension to the story, and could even be argued to be a main character, just as the heat is in Echo Burning. The description of the snow and ice was excellent, and was as good as anything that even the great Alistair McLean managed (which is a feat in itself!)

The countdown device at the end of each chapter - in most other authors hands - could have been hackneyed and tedious. In Child's hands (keys?) it's ridiculously exciting and builds the tension superbly.

Only when I did I get to the end of the book did I realise that there was barely any of the usual byzantine complex plot, or the usual crunching action scenes. And it was all the better for it.

Lee is back and has written one of his best books. Which makes it one of the best thrillers ever.

As Reacher's sit-rep says for his Unarmed Combat capabilities; Beyond Outstanding.