September 9, 2012

  • A Wanted Man

    The book I am reviewing in this post is the excellent thriller A Wanted Man by Lee Childs which I bought from kindle. All Lees books are part of the Jack Reacher series and out of the books I have read by him this is the best. Reacher is an exmilitary policeman who is now a wanderer in the USA and these books feature him solving crimes. The plot is he is hitch hiking when a car with 2 men who have murdered someone and a woman pick him up. The 2 men have murdered a CIA agent at an artesian well that is now dry and the woman is a hostage. The police are looking for a car driven by 2 men in suits driving a red car. The 2 men King & McQueen have changed their clothes and carjacked this ladies car and picked up Jack to try and fool the police. They tell Jack they are on their way to Chicago and suggest they take turns driving the car. The police get the impression Jack is involved in the crime due to him driving the car. Anyway the lady signals to Jack via the interior mirror by blinking a message in morse code. In the meantime the FBI & SAC are getting involved in the case because they are concerned that the groundwater could be poisoned via the artisian well which actually it hasn't. Jack gets spotted phoning for help from a remote garage and he gets away from the lady is still a hostage. An FBI agent comes out to the garage to arrest Jack but he convinces her to let him help her find the 2 men and their hostage. The lady does eventually get away but it looks like certain don't want the 2 men to be arrested and are prepared to kill them if necessary and frame Jack for their murder. The plot also involves them selling nuclear waste to foreign powers to make what they call a dirty bomb which isn't a proper atom bomb but contains fissionable material. If they made a proper atom bomb they would need to build a part nuclear power station part nuclear processing plant which would require a lot of expertise and money. This book is currently No1 on the UK Hardback Fiction Chart and I think that is well deserved.

oldscratbag

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