The Remorseful Day

61 Hours by Lee Child
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The 14th installment of the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child finds Reacher, on a bus with a group of elderly tourists when the bus crashes midway and leaves the passengers stranded in the city of Bolton, which is experiencing heavy snowfall and expecting a big storm. Amidst this foul weather the police department of the city is also trying to protect one of its citizens, an elderly lady who is a material witness in an important case involving drug trafficking. Jack Reacher gets involved and by the turn of the events finds himself helping the police in guarding the witness.

The plot though not reaching the heights of KILLING FLOOR or ONE SHOT, is one of the best to come out of Child’s pen. It had the army, the air force, the local police, unknown contract killers, mysterious buildings in the middle of nowhere and Jack Reacher. And, also the action scenes in this book were much shorter as compared to other novels. And, ever present was the trademark Lee Child speed. So, nothing could go wrong and nothing did go wrong. One unique factor of this book was that somewhere down the line it became a whodunit. As opposed to other Jack Reacher thrillers, where the plot is thrown open and the culprits are often introduced in the latter half of the book, in this one it was purely evident that the culprit was among a pre-determined group of suspects and that there was no chance of this being an outside job.

But, one down point was the name of the book. The title made it look like something was due to happen after 61 hours. But, the climax took place much after the designated 61 hours were over. This book could have been a 5 star book, had there not been the name fiasco. So, 4 stars.
P.S. Another unique point, Reacher didn’t sleep with anyone in this book.


View all my reviews