Product Description

Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher returns in a gutsy novel of heart- stopping action...

When a mysterious woman is kidnapped by a politically motivated fringe group and taken to their compound, Jack Reacher must help her escape with her life--from the inside out...

"Tough, elegant and thoughtful."--Robert B. Parker

"Opens with a bang."-- Chicago Tribune

"Engrossing." --Rocky Mountain News

"Riveting...paced with taut, evocative prose." --Greg Iles, author of Mortal Fear

Lee Child is "a suspense writer to be reckoned with." (Chicago Tribune)

"Sensational."--Tom Savage, author of The Inheritance

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #220612 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-11
• Released on: 2002-01-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 448 pages

From Amazon.com
Television writer Lee Child's otherwise riveting first thriller, Killing Floor, was criticized by some reviewers because of an unconvincing coincidence at its center. Child addresses that problem in his second book--and thumbs his nose at those reviewers--by having his hero, ex-military policeman Jack Reacher, just happen to be walking by a Chicago dry cleaner when an attractive young FBI agent named Holly Johnson comes out carrying nine expensive outfits and a crutch to support her soccer-injured knee. As Holly stumbles, Reacher grabs her and her garments--which gets him kidnapped along with her by a trio of very determined badguys. "He had no problem with how he had gotten grabbed up in the first place," Child writes. "Just a freak of chance had put him alongside Holly Johnson at the exact time the snatch was going down. He was comfortable with that. He understood freak chances. Life was built out of freak chances, however much people would like to pretend otherwise." Lucky for Holly--whose father just happens to be an Army general and current head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thus making her a tempting target for a bunch of Montana-based extremists--Reacher still has all the skills and strengths associated with his former occupation. And Child still knows how to write scenes of violent action better than virtually anyone else around. --Dick Adler

From Library Journal
Jack Reacher is in both the wrong and the right place at the same time when FBI Special Agent and daughter of the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Holly Johnson is abducted from a Chicago street. It is the wrong place because Reacher, a former army major drifting around the country, is kidnapped as well. It is the right place because only he has the instincts to foil the complex, deadly plan of the kidnappers, a Montana militia group headed by a charismatic, brilliant, but psychotic leader. Child's tale, very well read by Dick Hill, engrossingly portrays Reacher's efforts to manipulate the captors; the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the FBI, the army, and the White House; and the many unexpected roadblocks thrown in his path. Child devotes too much time, however, to the predictable rantings of the militia. Recommended for public libraries.?Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr., New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Listening to the voice of Dick Hill, one doesn't doubt that the powerful Jack Reacher has just retired from the Military Police. He booms as he reluctantly relates the winning of dozens of "damn medals" while he and fellow kidnap victim Holly get acquainted. Hill seems strained in the female voice, so Reacher is more drawn to Holly than the listener can be. He does far better at giving the overweight militia commander a high-pitched, whiny voice listeners can despise. Add FBI agents, politicians and cult members and a gripping crisis created by Child and Hill. R.N. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

"Birth" of a nation
In another rapidly paced action thriller, Lee Child hero, ex military policeman and superstar Jack Reacher, as he is inclined to do, unwittingly stumbles into a kidnapping. While ambling down a Chicago street he accidently collides into an attractive, limping and crutch toting woman knocking down her dry cleaning. While helping her pick up her fallen garments, Reacher and the woman are accosted by two gun wielding guys and forced into a waiting car. They are abducted and then transfered and locked into the cargo area of a truck where they are driven to an unknown destination.

In short order Reacher learns that his kidnap companion is FBI agent Holly Johnson who is recuperating from torn knee ligaments and on light duty for the moment. She happens to be the daughter of Joint Chiefs of Staff leader General Johnson and also the god daughter of the president.

After a long arduous journey, in which Reacher declines several escape attempts to protect the injured Johnson, they finally arrive at an enclosure deep in the forests of northwestern Montana. This geographically secure enclosure is the home of the Montana Militia, a para-military neo-Nazi group headed by a 400 pound behemoth Beau Borken. Borken, a paranoid and maniacal son of a California farmer who blew his head off when the government repossessed his farm, is a ruthless murderer who has no use for the U.S. government. He plans to use Holly Johnson's kidnapping to convert his militia into a separate nation!

The FBI gets wind of the plot through a covert operative within Borken's group. Without presidential support they commence an operation to free Johnson. Reacher, of course, while being held prisoner also plots to accomplish the same thing.

Childs' follow up to The Killing Floor, while falling a little short of the intrigue is still suspenseful and a worthwhile chapter in a continuing series.

The Master of Mayhem
Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" novels have a refreshing purity about them: simply action, mayhem, and brutality wrapped around straight, unadorned plots. Testosterone runs high, larger-than-life bad guys take evil to new depths, cliffhangers that would embarrass Indiana Jones. And if there is such a thing as a literary equivalent of film's slow-motion action scenes, then Lee Child is the master. Guns don't simply shoot a bullet; Child talks muzzle velocities, projectile weights, gun barrel chemistry, and the physics of 0.5-inch diameter bullet fired from a Barrett sniper rifle passing through skull and brain. All very violent, and all very entertaining.

"Die Trying" is Lee Child's second Jack Reacher novel, and there is no sophomore jinx. Reacher, ex-military cop and veritable walking encyclopedia of all armament, happens on the wrong place at the wrong time in downtown Chicago, finding himself unwittingly in the middle of a kidnapping. The victim: Holly Johnson, a beautiful and brainy FBI agent, but, as it turns out, much, much more. The perps: a band of neo-fascist wacko's - think Waco or Ruby Ridge - about to hatch a plot to declare independence and secede from the United States. Meanwhile, everybody from the FBI to the US Marines tries to find and free Holly, while Reacher works on the inside - as a co-hostage - fights to protect Holly's honor, chastity, and life. Child paints a wonderfully diabolically twisted Beau Borkin as the leader of the cult, and a rather fascinating picture of life inside an extreme right-wing conspiracy. Bottom line: not a novel you'll be retelling to the grandkids, and no literary milestone, but few can verbalize raw power better than Lee Child. A great page-turner, a great diversion, pure entertainment.

Never met a Jack Reacher book I didn't like
This is the second book in Childs Reacher series. It's a fabulous series with a hunky larger than life character who is humble, confident, fearless, always out-thinks the bad guys, and really knows how to kill. Jack Reacher lives life only in the present in a way that's a cross between hobo and Zen wanderer -- no possessions, no lasting relationships, no home, no luggage.

I started the series with Childs' 2 Reacher books written in the first person -- Persuader,the last, and The Killing Floor, the first. I think they're better for their first-person POV and Childs' dexterity with the character of Reacher.

In Die Trying, I loved the hypnotic psychotic snake-charmer like character of the villain Beau Borken, and Holly Johnson is one of Childs' stronger more resourceful female characters. The description of Reacher's journey through the mine shaft is some excellent listening. Dick Hill does an incredible job as reader for all the Reacher books. Recently, I read an excerpt from Enemy, the upcoming Reacher book and was truly surprised at how terse Childs' dialogue is. I highly recommend the audiobook format.

I hate Reacher's bad hygiene, worse than ever in Die Trying, and find it unbelievable Holly would touch him for the smell. I mean this is an active man oozing with testoreone, adrenaline, and sweat, not to mention contact with mounds of corpses and crawling through rats in a mine shaft! Couldn't he take just one shower in a 5-day period? Thankfully in later books Childs gets Reacher to water more frequently and gives him a toothbrush. Also those extra long descriptions of a bullet's trajectory -- filler!

I did have to suspend belief on a few things. A huge dynamite explosion on the road that did not damage the highway?

But this is fiction, and this is a fabulously enjoyable series to listen to. Can't wait for Enemy to be published, the first Reacher book I will read rather than listen to.