Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
Not unlike a fine wine, in terms of an analogy, the latter work of Lee Child has aged well, become more elegant in terms of narrative style and full-blooded in terms of narrative skill. Though a warning, Blue Moon is the most violent in the series. The smell of cordite appears to waft from the pages as they turn.
The opening is trade-mark Lee Child, with his former military muscle-man, intervening to help someone weaker, someone facing a problem. An elderly man named Aaron Shevick is struggling in modern America. Family Medical bills have now become unsustainable to manage, so Shevick has acquiesced to ‘the lender of last resort’; a loan-shark linked to the criminal underworld; preying on the vulnerable.
Reacher helps the old man home after dispatching the would-be mugger, discovering that Shevick and his wife are trapped in debt to a group of East European gangsters. Before you can summon up the image of The Equalizer, Reacher goes undercover to meet up with the gangster[s] and explain [or rather warn them of] the realities of messing with the wrong guy – a Knight-Errant, a Hero.
From this simple set-up erupts a cat-and-mouse game between rivals in gangland, Ukrainian and Albanian criminal cartels. So far so familiar, I hear the echo? But this time, Reacher’s game requires extreme prejudice. He feels for the elderly Shevick’s dilemma, an empathy to save their daughter’s life which resulted in their seeking help from a criminal loan-shark.
Reacher has no patience for the predator in society, and as he’s aged, this knight-errant of Lee Child, decides that the time to take prisoners is over, so he becomes as brutal as his adversaries.
Blue Moon acts as an example of the themes that striates heroism (and iconoclastic impatience) toward the bad-people in reality; themes Lee Child examines in the upcoming non-fiction work THE HERO which updates and augments his introduction to 2010’s International Thriller Writers 100: Thriller Novels.
The latest excursion into the adventures of Lee Child’s hero Jack Reacher is better written, more violent and more thought-provoking than what preceded the rise of this Blue Moon.
In terms of merit as a thriller novel?
Missing Jack Reacher’s 24th outing could cause a reader PTSD, because in this reality - we all need a hero to ‘biff the bad blokes’, even if this time there will be a great deal more Claret spilled in the process.
It’s a therapeutic novel in a hard-edged world.
