"Tripwire" - Lee Child
Above: "Tripwire" - Lee Child - 559 pages
If you've been dispirited by the fast paced, but spare, recent formulaic Reacher novels... try the earlier ones... the plots are better and there's more meat on the bones.
I completed reading this book today.
Mea Culpa. I'm still finding books in the Jack Reacher series that I haven't read. "Tripwire" was the third Reacher novel, published 1999, in the now twenty two book series.
Child put a lot more effort into his first books.... this one, 559 pages. I guess, Child's writing these first successful, well crafted books, laid the groundwork for more sloppily written, but, equally successful - sales wise - efforts, down the road, where his more recent Reacher books average 350 pages.
Along with sloppy, later writing efforts, Child erred in allowing the vertically challenged Tom Cruise to play the 6 foot 6 Reacher in his films. Hey... I'm not being anti PC here. I'm not saying there is a correlation between size and success... Napoleon was only 5'5"... but, Reacher's whole persona and character effectiveness was wrapped up in the fact that he was a big guy who wore Walmart chinos, cheap T shirts, clunky oxford shoes, carrying only a toothbrush and a bank card as accoutrements.
"Tripwire" sets Reacher in the period between his active military duty as an Army MP Major, and his later, unemployed, peripatetic lifestyle exhibited in most of the later Reacher series.
In "Tripwire," Reacher is found working a hard labor job in Key West, FL digging swimming pools. He's accosted in a bar by a New York City based private eye looking for "Jack Reacher." But, Reacher doesn't identify himself to the PI. He's wary. After all...
"He had no living relatives anywhere capable of leaving him a fortune in a will, He owed no money. He had never stolen anything, never cheated anybody. Never fathered any children. He was on as few pieces of paper as it was possible for a human being to get. He was just about invisible."
Why is a New York City based private investigator looking for him?
The next day Reacher comes across the PI sprawled dead, shot, on a Key West side street. Now, Reacher's curiosity IS piqued. Still in Key West, Reacher tracks down a couple of NY thugs in black suits reportedly having been seen with the PI. There is a skirmish. The suits get away.
Now Reacher embarks on a quest to find out who was tracking him down. He goes to New York... find's the deceased PI's office .. and... the PI's dead secretary, shot, on the premises.
Reacher's perusal of the PI's calendar leads him to the home of a US Army two star general, formerly one of his revered mentors in the Army.
Reacher shows up at the two star's home on the Hudson near West Point, and observes, as he stands there in the "wrong clothes," that he is at the general's funeral service. And, that the two star's daughter is supervising the wake.
Most of West Point seems to be present at the funeral service; Reacher realizes that he knew the daughter when she was only 15 back when he was serving under her father in Manila. Now the daughter is 30, a looker, and a top flight NYC corporate attorney.
Whaaaa? Someone else has, simultaneously, tracked Reacher down at the general's funeral. Its the same two, black suited thugs from Key West. And, after the funeral guests have departed the general's home, Reacher and the daughter are set up by the two thugs for their own funerals... unsuccessfully, as it turns out.
Now, Reacher and the daughter, soon to become his love interest, need to track down what/who on earth is coming after them, and why.
The novel turns around a dispirited Mom and Pop whose son was a hot shot helicopter pilot in Viet Nam. The son went missing after a helicopter crash... yet, the son neither has his name on the Washington Wall, nor is he listed among the army's missing in action (MIA).
The parents are despondent... they have sought help from their two star general friend. The general has hired a PI to track down someone the general believes can help find the true story about the missing helicopter pilot. Jack Reacher.
Somebody, for whatever reason, wants information about the fate of the son suppressed. And so begins an exciting, fast reading, sleuthing job by Reacher and the general's daughter taking them to Army helicopter school in Louisiana, an army records facility in St. Louis, back and forth a couple of times to New York City and to an MIA remains army processing facility in Honolulu.
What happened to the "missing" son? And, why is someone going to great efforts, even murder, to keep that information secret?
The novel is more than just another escape read. I learned some stuff... like how Vietnam MIA's were identified and processed through the US Army system. When bones were found, years after the fact, Child informs on the great lengths, no cost spared process, taken by the US Army, to identify the MIA remains and see that the subject soldiers received proper recognition by their country.
After having read "The Enemy," three weeks ago, and now "Tripwire," I'm finding that Child put a lot more effort into these earlier novels. In "The Enemy," the back drop of the ending cold war and its impact on tank corp generals maneuvering for status in a changing army was very informative. And, so, "Tripwire," where the MIA process was unfolded in some detail for the reader.
If you've been dispirited by the fast paced, but spare, recent formulaic Reacher novels... try the earlier ones... the plots are better and there's more meat on the bones.