What a way to go (The Visitor - Lee Child)

Name: tommy7

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Product:	The Visitor - Lee Child
Date:	21/05/01 (41 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Read, Thought provoking

Disadvantages: Cost of buying all the other books!

I must admit I had never heard of Lee Child when I found “The Visitor” in a service station. With no dooyoo to consult, with me being on the road, I had to take a chance on a new author! The thing that made me pick up the book was the marketing department’s guarantee to give you your money back “If your thirst for the ultimate thriller isn’t quenched..”. I had no intention of ever sending away to get my money back and I imagine most people are the same but it showed a lot of faith in Child so I decided to take a chance on him.

The front cover states that it is a Jack Reacher story. This was another thing that made me think that he must be a good writer if he thinks that people will but it on the strength of his name or that of his primary characters.

Reacher is a guy that almost every guy wants to be like. A free spirit that can easily take care of himself and that can turn almost every situation round to his chosen outcome. This is the fifth book in the Reacher series but I was able to read it without having read any of the others. I did feel that I would have gained a little by reading the previous books but this book did not suffer for the first time reader. This took a lot of skill as the Reacher faithful don’t want to re-read about his background but the new reader needs certain details. Child gets the balance perfectly.

The story if fairly fast paced and keeps the reader guessing at all times. It has been criticised by some people as being too predictable. I would agree that part of the ending was predictable but I was still taken by surprise at the outcome. I always think that a good story takes you by surprise initially but when you review the facts the outcome is very plausible. Again Child manages this brilliantly.

I think the thing that I liked most was the way Child leaked the story. There was no bombardment of facts. We find out information in much the same way
I would imagine real investigators do. This allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Reacher is employed by the FBI as a reluctant consultant. He only gives the FBI the barest of details, which again allows the reader to know that there must be enough to go on for Reacher to know what has happened. The reader is in much the same position as the FBI, knowing there is enough information there but not knowing (in my case anyway) how to interpret it.

Another thing I liked is the way that the story jumped from the main character to the killer and back. Everytime the killer was thinking, the words were in italics, which made it very clear what was going on. I usually do not like to read paragraphs of italics but I felt that they were well used here.

Perhaps the most surprising thing was that Child was born in England. He tells the entire story in America and seems to know the place quite well. Obviously not being American I perceive this but as his main market will be American it would have to be up to scratch.

I also learned a few new things by reading some of the small facts that Child drops into the story. For example why do nurses always squirt a little out of a hypodermic syringe before injecting someone? The answer may be well known but I didn’t know and this showed that Child had done a bit of research into certain parts of the story.

As I have said above there are four previous Jack Reacher books and now one subsequent one. I have now ordered all the others on the strength of this one book. For a fifth novel about the same character I thought there were still a lot of fresh ideas and certainly enough to make me think that all the other books will be worth reading.

This book’s RRP is £5.99 but it can be picked up in Tesco for £3.84 at either price it’s a bargain as it is an excellent read. Surely a film deal beckons?

Summary: