Digging swimming pools by hand in Key West, Florida, Jack Reacher is as tanned and as fit as he's ever been. A local girl says he looks like a condom filled with walnuts. Being invisible has become a habit. He doesn't want to be found. So when a private detective comes nosing around and asking questions, Reacher is not pleased. Especially when he later finds the guy dead. With his fingertips sliced off. Why was he so determined to find him? What does the vicious Wall Street honcho Hook Hobie have to do with it? And what about the reappearance of a woman from Reacher's own troubled past? "Tripwire" is a taut, nailbiting adventure which once again stars Lee Child's irresistible hero, the maverick former military policeman Jack Reacher.

Prizes

The author also wrote "Killing Floor", which won the Anthony Award in America, and "Die Trying" which won the WH Smith's Thumping Good Read Award in the UK.

Reviews

Child's newest Jack Reacher thriller is his best yet. It's as if the author, a former TV scriptwriter, actually took note of the scattered criticisms that appeared in the largely favorable reviews of his earlier books, Killing Floor and Die Trying. This time the plot does not rely on unlikely coincidence, the antagonist (a psychopathic, disfigured Vietnam vet with a secret) is a worthy opponent for the ex-military policeman- turned-drifter hero, and Reacher becomes multi-dimensional: he finds love and confronts his own fallibility. The story begins when the retired general who was Reacher's mentor seeks him out and draws him into a humanitarian task turned deadly. Meanwhile, Reacher is reunited with the general's daughter Jodie, his forbidden love 15 years earlier. In the end, forensic anthropology provides the key to the mystery, as the atmosphere of menace builds to a bloody climax. Child's crisp prose, intriguing protagonist, and skilled storytelling should win fans. Suspense fiction doesn't get much better than this.ÄMichele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Arlington, VA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Jack Reacher, the hulking ex-soldier readers will remember from Child's first two thrillers, Die Trying and Killing Floor, can kill with his bare hands, and sports chest muscles thick enough to stop bullets. He's actually a dynamo of a character, wily in an innocent sort of way, and the anchor to one of the best new series in thriller fiction. Here, Reacher is incognito, living the life of a drifter and digging swimming pools in Key West. When a PI from New York comes looking for him, and shortly afterwards turns up dead with his fingertips sliced off, Reacher flies north and discovers that the instigator of the search is Leon Garber, his former army commanding officer. But Garber has died the day before Reacher arrives. As Reacher finds out from Jodie Jacob, Garner's beautiful attorney daughter, Garber was helping an elderly couple to locate their son, who supposedly died in a helicopter crash during the Vietnam War. The military won't confirm the death, however, or even classify the soldier as missing in action. Pursuing the search together, Reacher and Jacob narrowly escape murder attempts by a pair of dark-suited thugs who work for an evil corporate loan shark named "Hook" Hobie, who has a hideously disfigured face and a metal hook for a right hand. Hobie is harboring a terrible secret linking him to the couple's vanished son, and he'll kill anyone who tries to discover his diabolical past. A showdown between the two men is inevitable, and when it happens, it's a beautÄalmost as good as Child's skillfully laid surprise ending and the crisp and original dialogue throughout. Reacher is a complex, contemplative brute whose aversion to social and material entanglements entail very peculiar habits and ideas. He never cleans his clothes, preferring to buy new ones (going to a dry cleaner implies a commitment to return); and he's spellbinding whether kicking in doors or just kicking around a thought in his brain. Literary Guild featured alternate; feature film rights for Killing Floor and the character of Jack Reacher optioned by Mark Johnson/Polygram; rights to Jack Reacher series sold to 18 countries. (July) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.