61 Hours

June 28, 2010
Narrator Dick Hill has been perfecting Reacher's hard-boiled verbal swagger for years. In this installment, Reacher is stranded in a snow-bound South Dakota town where a biker gang has turned an abandoned facility into a meth lab. A member of the gang is in prison awaiting trial, and a hit man has been hired to remove the only witness to the crime, a 70-something librarian. According to a curious stipulation, every time the prison's trouble gong sounds every policeman in town must report there immediately—even if it means leaving the sweet old librarian to the mercy of the unknown assassin. Happily, none of these convolutions give Hill pause. It's his job to entertain, and that he does, almost chuckling as he describes Reacher's takedown of two giant bikers, relishing the hero's heralded powers of observation, or summoning up a large, accented ration of nastiness for the villain of the piece, a diminutive Mexican crime boss named Plato. When the book finally arrives at the end of its 61-hour countdown, thanks to Hill the time seems to have been well spent. A Delacorte hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 1).

March 1, 2010
After a brief stop in New York City (Gone Tomorrow
), Jack Reacher is back in his element—Smalltown, U.S.A.—in bestseller Child's fine 14th thriller to feature the roving ex-military cop. When a tour bus on which he bummed a ride skids off the road and crashes, Reacher finds himself in Bolton, S.Dak., a tiny burg with big problems. A highly sophisticated methamphetamine lab run by a vicious Mexican drug cartel has begun operating outside town at an abandoned military facility. After figuring out the snow-bound, marooned Reacher's smart, great with weapons, and capable of tapping military intelligence, the helpless local cops enlist his assistance, and, as always, he displays plenty of derring-do, mental acuity, and good old-fashioned decency. While the action is slower than usual, series fans will appreciate some new insights that Child provides into his hero's psyche and background as well as a cliffhanger ending. Author tour.