Gone Tomorrow [Paperback]

Lee Child (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 396 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Press (2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 059305704X
• ISBN-13: 978-0593057049
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (305 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,928,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lee Child is the #1 internationally bestselling author of thirteen Reacher thrillers, including the New York Times bestsellers The Enemy, One Shot, The Hard Way, and the #1 bestselling Bad Luck and Trouble and Nothing to Lose. His debut, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Mystery, and The Enemy won both the Barry and the Nero awards for Best Novel. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in forty territories, and all titles have been optioned for major motion pictures. Child, a native of England and a former television director, lives in New York City, where he is at work on his fourteenth Reacher thriller, 61 Hours.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

185 of 199 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars With my personal guarantee, May 22, 2009

By 

Richard B. Schwartz (Columbia, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher, No. 13) (Hardcover)

Some readers were disappointed by Nothing to Lose. They have my personal guarantee that they will not be disappointed by Gone Tomorrow. Jack Reacher is back and he's back with a vengeance. Literally. The story opens with Reacher on a northbound NYC subway car, one built in Japan, to specifications which he discusses in detail. Why? Because Jack is a curious man and so are the readers who overhear him telling his stories. He also details the specifications because they will come back to play a role in the story several hundred pages later. On that car, in the middle of the night, a woman who appears to be a potential suicide bomber does something else instead. Her action haunts Jack and he does not rest until he knows the reasons for her actions and exacts vengeance on those who have caused those actions.

Except for some brief moments in Washington, Gone Tomorrow is set in Manhattan, a city that both Jack Reacher and his creator know very well. The wide cast of characters includes members of the NYPD, the FBI, miscellaneous defense/homeland security types, some private security forces and some uber-baddies from Turkmenistan. The plot involves actions from the early 1980's and actions from today's headlines. The plot is as tight (to adapt one of the novel's similes) as the endpoint of the alimentary canal of a piscine creature. There is a bit of sex and a great deal of violence (strong but not pornographic).

The novel is replete with information, as Child taps into the wellsprings of the techno-thriller. There is also a great deal of ratiocinative mystery: how can you find someone in NYC in the middle of the night? How can you deduce the likely behavior of an individual from the scant remaining facts at your disposal? What are the best moves to employ against two individuals coming at you with brass knuckles? Why do you need a glove to operate a certain form of automatic weapon? How do the government's security-system computers operate?

This is Lee Child at his best: jackhammer suspense, pages flipping at light speed and Jack Reacher in full-tilt sarcastic mode, with a small army of baddies deserving of the business end of his best skills. Only one bit of advice: begin it when you have the time to finish it, because that is exactly what you will want to do. This is primo stuff; don't miss it.

54 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reacher Returns To Form As Child Tones Down His Politics, May 29, 2009

By 

TMStyles (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher, No. 13) (Hardcover)

Lee Child's "Gone Tomorrow" is the 13th Jack Reacher installment. It is a much needed return to the stylings to which we loyal fans became addicted; certainly, it is far superior to the politically slanted "Nothing To Lose." My sole quibble with "Gone Tomorrow" is that Child again, although with much more subtlety, infuses his British perspective of American policy into Reacher's actions and consciousness. As a loyal reader of a great character, I am not interested in Lee Child's view of American foreign policy, past or present.

That being said, this novel begins with a random incident on a late night subway in New York where Reacher suspects a passenger of being a suicide bomber and due to his intervention, a death occurs which motivates him to trace the victim's backstory in hopes of understanding who and what caused the unnecessary tragedy. A continuous series of government and private agents begin confronting Reacher assuming he has valuable knowledge(and property)gained from the victim. Before one settles in, Reacher is fending off the NYPD, FBI, Homeland Security, paid investigators, and a slew of foreign bad guys that will please anyone's appetite for evil villains.

Reacher is as perceptive, logical,and analytical as ever in "Gone Tomorrow." He actually instructs the reader about a number of arcane minutiae such as how to knife fight, defend against brass knuckles, and disappear in NYC. Reacher is less taciturn and more focused than he has been recently and even pals up with NYPD detective and a grieving father for a time.

There is more than ample violence and gore to please the loyal Reacher fan, the plotting is tight, and Reacher continues to be fun to decipher as he analyzes people and events. As usual, Jack Reacher is NOT a character you want mad at you or to seek vengeance against you. And Child does a fasacinating job of describing Manhatten and the underbelly environs of NYC.

For me, the mark of a fine writer is his/her ability to entice me into reading chapter after chapter in a comfortable flowing exposition and not realizing the passage of time or the need to suspend disbelief. Child can do that when he is at his best--entice the reader to become one whith his signature character. I just hope he works more diligently to leave his political slant out of future Reacher novels.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of Lee Child's Best, May 26, 2009

By 

C. Baker "cbaker" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher, No. 13) (Hardcover)

Gone Tomorrow is the 13th novel in the Jack Reacher series. Reacher is a retired Army MP and a drifter who seems to find big trouble wherever he goes. Reacher is a great character and all the novels in this series are entertaining, but they are very uneven in terms of plot credibility and overall enjoyment.

Gone Tomorrow is one of the absolute best of the series. As the novel begins Reacher finds himself on the subway late at night in New York City and happens to see a passenger, Susan Mark, acting strangely. This sets off all kinds of alarm bells for Reacher who is trained to spot terrorists and other nefarious characters looking to do others harm. As the events unfold Reacher finds himself chasing, and being chased, by the FBI, the Department of Defense, the New York City Police Department, and a shadowy group of possible terrorists, all looking for a piece of explosive information, and willing to kill to get it.

This novel is a fast paced thriller and mystery and works extremely well as both. The plot becomes intricate and mysterious as Reacher tries to find out who is behind the events unfolding, and then tries to discover why the information being sought is so important. There are plenty of twists and turns as Reacher continues to unravel the mystery to a rather explosive and violent conclusion.

Other than a few quibbles over political details that are over generalized, this novel was a real page turner and very entertaining. One of Lee Child's best.