Persuader by Lee Child

Lee Child, Persuader (New York: Dell Books; 2003), 480 pages.

Lee Child's "Persuader" is another book featuring Child's signature character Jack Reacher. Reacher is a former military policeman who is now retired and spends his time travelling incognito around the United States. He prefers to keep to himself, but situations and circumstances arise that work against this. In this book, Reacher finds himself in New England helping federal agents infiltrate a criminal organization that has taken a federal agent hostage. Reacher's motivation in personal: he recognizes a member of the criminal organization as someone he and his team failed to kill ten years ago. With this second chance, Reacher successfully works "off the books" with the federal agents and infiltrates the criminal organization and systematically goes about doing what he does best, namely kill bad people without remorse.

As a work of fiction, "Persuader" is adequately entertaining. It’s well written by a prolific author that has built a successful writing and now movie franchise around the character of Jack Reacher. "Persuader" is not a work of art and it’s a good bet that the author will not be recommended for a Booker or Nobel Prize based on this work. The book however does enough to keep the reader turning the pages. I'm not sure this is Lee Child's best book. At times it’s formulaic and riddled with violence. I didn't enjoy it, but did not dislike it so much as to want to put it down. A book about a self-righteous, live for the moment nihilist who operates simultaneously in co-operation with the law and above the law and intent of a killing spree motivated by revenge is enough to contain my curiosity for the duration. The down side of this book is that it breeds familiarity and sympathy for such a character who acts simultaneously as enforcer, judge, jury and executioner. I'm not certain that this is what we want in all of our popular fiction, but acknowledge that Lee Child has built a career on serving an audience that wants exactly that. Perhaps this reader has read enough of the works of Lee Child for the time being. Perhaps it is time for this reader to move onto other authors and come back to the works Lee Child at a later date.