Tripwire by Lee Child

Author: Lee Child

Title: Tripwire

Publisher: Bantam 

Published: 1999

Pages: 560

Genre: Thriller

     For Jack Reacher being invisible has become a habit. He spends his days digging swimming pools by hand and his nights as the bouncer in the local strip club in the Florida Keys. He doesn't want to be found. But someone has sent a private detective to seek him out. Then Reacher finds the guy beaten to death with his fingertips sliced off. It's time to head north and work out who is trying to find him and why.

     When it comes to Tripwire this was hardly my first time in the world of Reacher. But it had been a while, only having finished the new and very excellent tv show did I go to my shelves and seek out another.  It has to be said I always find it a little amusing that the blurb on the back of these books is so minimal. Much like the titular hero words tend to get in the way of getting to the truth. For me going for one of Child's books is a comfort thing. I know exactly what I'm going to get.  And some might complain that is too boring and what's the point. But is that not why we come back to our favorite authors time and again. We like that familiarity mixed in with whatever new adventure the author has cooked up. In amongst the hurly-burly of this crazy world, a little stability goes a long way. 

     When it comes to Reacher this is a man for whom trouble seems to seek him out. I always got the impression that he would be more than happy to have the open road in front of him and nothing to tie him down. It is however a life that he will never be able to settle into for very long. With each new installment, our hero gets pulled into some new corrupt skullduggery. And each time he has to rely on just a handful of people to help him out. Despite being a one-man army no one is capable of solving these problems alone. So what we get is this merry band of unlikely heroes. Child's always manages to make these groups stick. We come to care about their troubles over the course of five hundred-odd pages. But then again we are meant to see a little of ourselves in these people Reacher has come to help. More often than not stuck in a bad situation that is not of their own doing. They have this sort of Norman Rockwell feel to them. Those all American blue-collar people just trying to make ends meet. 

     But be it small-town America or the Big Apple corruption seems to claw and snarl its way into the lives of folks like me and you. With Child his villains are always so believable you can see them lurking in the shadows of everyday life. Their actions are always plausible and whilst we would never agree with the decisions they make, you can see how they would make sense to them and we can understand the motivations behind them. And that is the thing with this author for all the thrills and spills he sends our way the characters are the beating heart of these books. Tripwire is no exception their tangled webs of lies and deceit pulling us ever closer to the truth. We get wrapped up with them just as if it were happing to us. I can see how with one miss-step I too could fall foul of these people.  

     As for the story the author manages to once again pull off a slick and well-written thriller. From the get-go, we are launched into this new mystery with all the vigor of the marines storming into the breach. He leads us on a well-thought-out dance, this way and that as we inch ever closer to the sickening truth buried at the heart of this mystery. And whilst there are bursts of extreme violence this is never really the point of the exercise. Bad people do bad things to good people and in the world of Reacher, he is there to balance the books. To give us in fiction something we so rarely get in real life. And that is justice, we are left in no doubt as to who the bad guys of this piece are. We can witness the heinous deeds in flashbacks just to emphasize the evil doings. So when the time comes for Reacher to punch them square in the face we the readers are left in no doubt as to the righteousness of these actions. But it s that balance between these two worlds that make the books work for me. The calm and the storm too give us the emotional ride we demand. It allows us to bond with this hero and to not see him as some mindless machine but rather the hero we wish we could be. The person who stands up to the schoolyard bully.

     So in conclusion, if you have read any of the other books in the series you are pretty much going to know what's coming. This for me doesn't make them any less of an enjoyable read. I enjoy knowing what I'm getting, let's be honest you aren't going to complain if you get home and your favorite dinner is waiting for you. And that's what Child's doesn't so blisteringly well. Tripwire is no exception the ingredients are the same but the chef has once again managed to create a whole new meal.