Die Trying

Written By : Lee Child

Narrated By : Dick Hill

Published By : Brilliance Audio Inc

Runtime : 15 hours

Categories : Crime
Thrillers
Detective
Detective

Price : $24.95

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In a Chicago suburb, a dentist is met in his office parking lot by three men and ordered into the trunk of his Lexus. On a downtown sidewalk, Jack Reacher and an unknown woman are abducted in broad daylight by two men - practiced and confident - who stop them at gunpoint and hustle them into the same sedan. Then Reacher and the woman are switched into a second vehicle and hauled away, leaving the dentist bound and gagged inside his car with the woman's abandoned possessions, two gallons of gasoline. . . and a burning match.

The FBI is desperate to rescue the woman, a Special Agent from the Chicago office, because the FBI always - always - takes care of its own, and because this woman is not just another agent. Reacher and the woman join forces, against seemingly hopeless odds, to outwit their captors and escape. But the FBI thinks Jack is one of the kidnappers - and when they close in, the Bureau snipers will be shooting to kill.

Lee Child has created another page turner as ex-military cop, Jack Reacher, gets embroiled with the FBI and home grown terrorists (American Militia movement). In this thrilling audio book, Reacher spends a lot of time traveling in the back of a van with an attractive FBI agent whose path he happened to cross on a busy Chicago street. Faithful Child readers, like myself, have come to accept the element of coincidence which places Reacher in these dire predicaments. But, hey, the big guy has a big heart. What I enjoyed most about this book was the characterization of the militia leader and the “flock” of followers. Think Timothy McVay kind of people, with the same mistrust and disdain for the US government combined with a longing for some white man's utopia. Add to the mix a delusional psychopath (think Rev. Jim Jones) who is the self proclaimed leader to a promised land, in this case a desolate part of the great American north west, and you have the perfect makings of an armed and very dangerous cult. Without giving away too much, there is one part of this book that tapped into a common phobia and had me squirming uncomfortably in my seat. Let’s just say Reacher finds himself in the ultimate “tight squeeze”. As a hero, Reacher is outside “the system” just as much as the individuals he confronts. But he is not political nor is he in search of any position of power. Frankly, he just wants to be left alone. But his personal sense of justice doesn’t allow him to remain in solitude. He’s the hired gun who doesn’t care about getting paid. He makes himself available when no one else can do the job. This theme of needing to go outside the normal legal resources to deal with modern day criminals/terrorists/anarchists is quite provocative. It resonates with our collective and primitive desires for justice to be served swiftly and simply; to dispatch of our modern “bad guys” with a law of the jungle finality. In these times, we all want a Jack Reacher in our tribe. More reviews by Bruce Walls can be found at www.audiobookgo.com