Tripwire (Jack Reacher)

By Lee Child

Book Overview

Jack Reacher hunts the hunter in the third novel in Lee Child's #1 New York Times bestselling series. DON'T MISS REACHER ON PRIME VIDEO! Ex military policeman Jack Reacher is enjoying the lazy... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0515143073
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Berkley
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 1.3" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent story but too wordy.

Lee Child (James Dover Grant CBE, born 29 October 1954) is a British author best known for his Jack Reacher novel series. This is a great series and well thought out. If you have read other Jack Reacher books, then you will notice the pattern of evil and the types of people. The only drawback is that he is too descriptive. For example, instead of saying the “hand was too small,” we get “It had the required number of fingers. Not six or seven or two or three but five as the standard. Looking closer, only four looked like a finger. The fifth was opposing; let us call that a thumb. He could place those fingers in a space that no normal person could fit. This may prove to be his downfall.” Without this over-descriptive and unnecessary deviation from the plot, the book could be written in half the words. The story has Jack Reacher, an ex-military police major, tracked down in Florida by a private detective. Soon that detective is dispatched, and others are looking for Reacher. Now Reacher must find out the who, what, where, and why of the dastardly deed. This will take him to find old friends, a possible love, and a conspiracy. I will not go into the details, as that is why you are reading the book. I found it quite eerie that you can tell Lee Child has not been to any of the locations mentioned, but he nailed the purpose of the different locations. I have seen the other side of the Hudson from West Point. I knew some of the streets in NY. I wonder if he used maps. I was in the Army Map Service at Ft. Belvoir, and it was not as well described, but it was included in the story. I was on the ground unit training in Ft. Walters and knew some of the helicopter pilots, but it still was a tad different terrain than was mentioned. During my stint in Ft. Polk, the only helicopters I saw were for training on how to evade being spotted by helicopters while moving on the ground. I was in Vietnam a year before this story took place. Being in armed recon, I had plenty of helicopter time, and the description was surprisingly good. I spent a lot of time with my legs hanging out of the Huey while in flight, so it was easy to visualize. The bottom line is that it does not have to be real to be fun to read and follow the story. Just cut out the over-description.

One of the best.

Tripwire is one of the best Reacher novels out there. I always learn something in Mr. Childs books and this didactic novel depicting the Viet Nam helocopter rescues does all that.

Would read again

I'm already through books 1-4, starting number 5 here soon. Book 3 tripwire, i would read over again for sure. Book came in "new" condition, paperback, and it seriously looks or appears to be untouched by anyone. looks brand new.

Love the Jack Reacher books.

Very good book. If you like the Jack Reacher books, you'll like this one.

Tripwire

I have read 11 of Lee Child's books and I can't wait for the next one to appear. Once you start reading you can't put the book down. My husband is a very slow reader, but not when he is reading Lee Child's books. I would recommend this to anyone that likes a good mystery, suspense or adventure book.

Completely and totally hooked...

Yup... completely and totally hooked... I just finished up the third installment in the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child... Tripwire. And they seem to keep getting better. Reacher, an ex-Army MP and drifter, is now in the Keys digging swimming pools by hand. No plan, no direction, it's just where he is at this point in time. His routine starts to crumble when two separate parties from New York show up looking for him, and he doesn't have a clue as to why they should need to know. He lies to both of them about who he is, and one of the individuals turns up dead a few hours later. Reacher decides his time in the Keys is up, and heads north to find out who's looking into his life. It ends up being the daughter of an Army general who was almost like Jack's dad. Running parallel to the story is another thread involving a CEO of a crumbling company and his attempts to keep it going by borrowing money from "Hook" Hobie, an amputee from the Vietnam war who takes great pleasure in using his prosthetic hook to inflict damage on those who do not pay up on time. Hobie is alerted that something from his past is starting to encroach on his current life, but he doesn't want to flee until he finishes the deal with the CEO. He also needs the daughter of the general that Reacher has hooked up with. Jack needs to keep the daughter safe, fulfill a promise to an elderly couple who's son is listed as missing in action, and figure out if he's ready to start settling down a bit... I think what I like most about this series is Reacher's "humanness". It's far too easy to paint a main character as some "can do no wrong" superhero who always makes the right decisions. While Reacher is definitely a force to be reckoned with, he's also like a large child who hasn't figured out how to live in today's society like everyone else. The writing is terse and the story is pretty tight, and the total convergence of all the plotlines doesn't happen until the very end. I was definitely unsure as to how it was all going to resolve, and I really couldn't put the book down. This is some of the best recreational reading I've had in a long time, and I'm glad I have another five or so books left in the series before I'm up to date. Highly recommended...

Again . . . the best writer you're not reading

It would be interesting to see Mr. Child write something out of the Jack Reacher genre. Of course, there's always the response, 'why?' Here's Jack in Key West, doing what he says he always wants to do, drift, when he hooks up with an ex-cop from New York who gets dead after talking to Jack. And, as only Jack can, he wants to know why. You want to say, leave Jack. Go to Tahoe, Santa Monica, Santa Fe. But don't go looking for the 'why.' We like Jack because he is like Clint Eastwood, the man with no name. Most of the readers critical of 'Tripwire' are reading a book six years late. Of course there are changes. Try to get on a plane without a retinal scan. Life has changed since September 11. But Child is like DeMille. If you pick up The Cathedral or Charm School, obviously the boogie man is dead and life is different. But it's still damn good reading. Mr. Child might want to take a look at authors who left their money makers behind and tilled new soil (Dennis Lehane kissing Patrick and Angie goodbye) and those that didn't (John Sandford and Lucas Davenport in the Prey series) and decide owhere he wants to go from there. But in the meantime I'm a Jack Reacher fan and I'll read anything Mr. Child writes. Larry Scantlebury. 5 Stars.