The Remorseful Day

Nothing to Lose by Lee Child
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A thriller is a kind of book which is meant to thrill the reader. So, when Lee Child sits down and writes a book I am rest assured that if not anything else that the book will thrill me. And, it does, not just me, but also the million fans of Child all over the world.

This book thrilled me, but other than that I can’t say that it did much else. Recaher while drifting enters a town called Despair. No sooner had he entered the town than he finds himself being thrown away out of it, slapped with a vagrancy charge. Not before he had managed to break one of the town deputy’s noses. Reacher doesn’t like getting pushed, so he goes back into the town and then, as a result of Lee Child style, all hell breaks loose with Reacher standing in path of the impending doom, with a lady as the co-warrior.

Now here I guess, lays the biggest flaw of the book. The motive wasn’t strong enough for Reacher to do all the things he did after he was thrown out of the town for the first time. Ok, granted that he is a one-man-army, and he doesn’t like to be pushed around but is it a motive strong enough to snoop around in a town where he is not wanted?? No matter what is hidden there, waiting to be busted or discovered.

Other than this single yet strong flaw, everything was totally Lee Child style. Dialogues, and the pace of the book, everything. He really knows how to build suspense, in every book he writes he builds up the tension from page one, making the reader guess and anticipate the impending doom. Sometimes the ending matches the suspense created earlier; sometimes it doesn’t, as was the case with this book. But, good ending or not, the reading experience is always top grade. Breezing through the pages never poses a problem for me. But, the book could have been 100 pages shorter cutting the pages filled with action sequences and boring travelogue.

Summing up, this book is a light read. Nothing much to expect and definitely not one of Child’s better efforts. Recommended only for hardcore Reacher fans, other readers can happily skip this one.



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