Book Review: Lee Child’s Gone Tomorrow

Posted November 16, 2012 by Kathy Davie in Book Reviews

I received this book for free from the library in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Source: the library
Book Review: Lee Child’s Gone Tomorrow

Gone Tomorrow


by

Lee Child


It is part of the , series and is a thriller in Hardcover edition that was published by Delacorte Press on April 2009 and has 441 pages.

Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon


Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Killing Floor, Die Trying, "Second Son", Tripwire, Running Blind, Echo Burning, Without Fail, Persuader, The Enemy, One Shot, The Hard Way, Bad Luck and Trouble, Nothing to Lose, 61 Hours, Worth Dying For, The Affair, A Wanted Man, "Deep Down", Never Go Back, "High Heat", Personal, Make Me, "Small Wars", Night School, MatchUp, The Midnight Line, Past Tense, No Middle Name, The Hero, Blue Moon, "Cleaning the Gold"

Fifteenth chronologically in the Jack Reacher thriller series and thirteenth publication-wise. This one is back in New York City.

My Take

Whoa…action, suspense, drama, and guilt. And Reacher is slowing down mentally in this one.

Macabre, but the comment did crack me up: Suicide bombers “by definition are all first-timers”.

It’s all chance in this story. The end game for the terrorists that takes them across so many paths. A lonely woman with a critical job who loves her son.

Then there are the supposed good guys. The ones who can do anything they want to you. And you have no recourse. What is happening to our country? How many of our civil liberties are we going to allow the government to grind down into the mud? It’s one thing to hear politicians proclaim how they are protecting the citizens. It’s another to read how those “protections” actually affect someone. Christ, it scared and scares me to death! Throwing people in jail simply because they can.

Everyone is giving Reacher the runaround. The participants in this are enough to give you the willies.

“…I felt he was telling the absolute truth. And lying through his teeth. Both at the same time.” Man, if that chunk’a text doesn’t get your curiosity flaring…

Poor Reacher. He’s so clueless about modern technology: flash drives, cellphones, cellphone cameras, the Internet, DVDs. Theresa Lee gets all excited about calling up Scotland Yard and, offhandedly, telling her partner to wait ’cause she’s on the line with them.

Interesting analysis of the types of medals a soldier can earn and the types of situations that make that possible.

Oh boy. We really need to stop interfering in other countries. When you think of the jerks the United States has supported in the past — these are just the best known ones! — Osama bin Laden, Pol Pot, Qadaffyi, Idi Amin, Ferdinand Marcos, Deng Xiaoping, Francisco Franco, Noriega, Augusto Pinochet, Papa Doc Duvalier, and Saddam Hussein. WTF??

The Story

It’s strictly chance that Reacher is on this subway with a potential suicide bomber. He’s dead if he interferes. He’s dead if he doesn’t. And sitting around is just not Reacher’s style.

It’s the aftermath that has Reacher digging deeper. Too many people interested in a simple suicide. Too many of the wrong types.

Her brother, Jake, wants to let it go, but in the end, he can’t. Meanwhile, Reacher is wanted by the feds and the NYPD. He’s on the run, hiding from everyone.

The Characters

Jack Reacher forgets very little from his past career as an extremely successful military policeman for the army. One thing he does remember is the behavioral indications list of a suicide bomber.

Detective Theresa Lee just wants to keep her head down and do her job. Just her job. Then she meets Reacher. Detective Docherty is her partner.’

Susan Mark is caught between a rock and death; her job is with the human resources department for the U.S. Army. It takes a while, but Reacher finally pieces it together. She’s probably better off. Peter is the son who plays football and lives with his father in California. Jacob Mark is her brother and a cop in Jersey. And he doesn’t believe she was the type.

Congressman John Samson was in the Rangers, then moved to Delta Force, and then Special Forces for a total of seventeen years. Reacher figures sure. Until he checks a few things out. Elspeth Samson is in on pretty much everything about her husband. Springfield, a.k.a., Browning, has been with Samson throughout his military career. Now he’s in charge of his political security.

Rodriguez, Frlujlov, Mbele, and an unknown passenger who took off were all on the car with Reacher. All things considered, why didn’t they intervene?

Lila Hoth is a foreign national with many roles and a range of interests. Svetlana Hoth is her mother and claims to have been a Red Army commissar in Afghanistan. The boys from Sure and Certain, Inc., got in way too deep. Leonid is one of the crew.

The Cover and Title

The cover is red and white as a subway train flashes across with white light framing the vanishing perspective. It’s a rush!

I think a better title would have been What Goes Around considering all the back-and-forth and the history that came back to bite them. Instead the title sums up politics. A leader is here today and Gone Tomorrow.