This story was long awaited, partly because the author has been building up to the meeting of Jack Reacher with Susan Turner and his journey across America to Virginia for several books – this association started in the book 61 Hours, so definitely worth reading that one and before this. On the other hand, this book is one of the best Jack Reacher thrillers, so you might not want to wait. I was waiting to read this in paperback, but was delighted to receive it in a beautiful hardcover edition for my birthday.
I prefer Jack Reacher novels when he works with an accomplice, often a woman, to solve a case and hand out his own brand of justice to the perpetrators. Never Go Back fits the bill and matches The Enemy for excitement and daring plot as a result. There are other plot twists – this book is all about Reacher’s past coming back to haunt him. Does he have a child? Has one of his many violent episodes resulted in a conviction that will see him jailed? Will his previous service in the army see him forcibly conscripted to serve his country again? I tried hard to pace myself reading this one, having polished off other Reacher novels in a couple of days and then having a long wait for the next one. Unfortunately, once I was a few chapters in, I was hooked and as usual sped through it. The compelling question was – having gone back, would Reacher leave again? Or would he finally have re-discovered a life for which it was worth settling down?
This book was pretty ordinary, which made me wonder how often you can accurately identify a rotten book within the first chapter? If you have a good prediction rate, you could save valuable reading time for better books. A give-away from this book was the amount of the story that was told via dialogue. Whole chapters without any narrative. And another flaw was the lack of emotional depth – much is made of a “Famous Day” that Kay and Simon spent together – so why not, you know, actually put it in the book. It needn’t even be at the start – tuck it in further down the book – but don’t leave it out completely! 
Another in the Lincoln Rhyme/Amelia Sachs series from Jeffery Deaver – this one is pretty good and hints at the dangers for society with the growth of corporations that store massive amounts of data about private citizens.
I don’t usually read biographies, but this excellent biography of Alan Turing was given to me as a gift and I found it fascinating. There are plenty of plaudits for the treatment Andrew Hodges has given his subject and I agree he’s done a first class job. Even more so if you read the author’s notes at the end of the book and appreciate just how little material was freely available and the personal hardships the author entailed in order to write the book. His sources were the biography written by Turing’s mother and the academic papers/records available. Subsequent to that, Hodges interviewed many of the main players in Turing’s life in order to reveal much of the character of the man as well as to fill in the gaps in his life history.
This is another Harry Bosch novel from Michael Connelly. I liked some of the back story where Bosch duels with his new statistics-led boss and has to get creative in order to continue with the investigations that matter to him. I found the main plot rather tenuous and didn’t buy into it – not one of Connelly’s best.
This is the best book by Jo Nesbo that I’ve read. It stands out due to the quality of the back story that he tells, set during World War I. It’s also set early in the timeline of the lead character, Harry Hole, and includes how he met Rakel (who features heaviliy in other stories including The Snowman).
I picked this book in my local book shop, not having read anything by this author before. It took a couple of attempts before I was hooked, but once the main character, Joe Pickett, had travelled to YellowStone Park and begun his investigations, I really enjoyed it. The character breaks the mold for this kind of thriller: he isn’t particularly violent (and admits to being rubbish with a weapon) – that side of things is left to his side-kick, Nate); he doesn’t seem all that sure of himself (unlike 
Jeffery Deaver has introduced a new character. Special Agent Kathryn Dance is the star of this thriller and, for me, it’s every bit as good as one of his Lincoln Rhyme books. There are massive parallels – Rhyme is an expert criminologist who can track the movements of a suspect by the merest grain of sand that falls from his trousers; Dance is an expert interrogator who can pry into the innermost thoughts of a suspect by spotting the tiniest signals from their body language. I was impressed at the technical depth the author shows in his knowledge of the Kinesics (he even includes a list of books for further reading). And I loved the passage when Dance phoned up Rhyme for advice in the middle of the book and talks to his assistant Amelia Sachs, the other star of those books – priceless. 
I picked up this book, the first of “The Second Foundation Trilogy, authorised by the Estate of Isaac Asimov” after enjoying 
My Dad gave me a rather nice hard back edition of this book – I’d read it once before, but it’s one of the best Jack Reacher thrillers and I was happy to read it again. What makes it so good? Well, it’s a flash back to when Reacher was in the army, and it explains one of the mysteries of this series that’s often mentioned in other books – why did he suffer demotion back to Captain? It also touches on his family background and we see his strained relationship with his brother. It seems that everything and everyone is against him – his awful boss, the higher echelons of the army, his sick mother’s health. Being Reacher, he takes it on the chin, ignores the growing list of dangerous enemies, makes a valuable ally in fellow MP Summer, and stays true to his own code of justice.
musingstudio 