One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9)

From Publishers Weekly While reader Hill has proven himself to be an all-purpose narrator with a 200-plus audiography, his specialty is interpreting suspense and crime fiction like this bullet-paced thriller. Written lean enough to make Hemingway seem chatty, the ninth novel to feature the resourceful ex-military cop Jack Reacher begins with a bare-bones description of an unemotional sniper prepping for and carrying out a mass slaying in the business area of an unnamed Indiana city. The killer's dispassion is chilling, and Hill, who has narrated the author's previous titles, matches the mood with an objectivity that raises the goose-bump level even higher. When Reacher, one of fiction's more reticent heroes, arrives on the scene, Hill provides him with a brusque, confident, properly manly voice, but adds a note of wariness that subtly suggests the adventurer's cynical nature. This tops a gallery of smart audio portraits, each with his own identifiable accent. Child has purposely designed the novel to move forward unfettered by stylish flourishes, and Hill follows that plan, concentrating mainly on increasing the pace as the story speedballs to its satisfying conclusion. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. LEE CHILD is the author of ten Jack Reacher thrillers, including the New York Times bestsellers Persuader, the Barry Award Winner The Enemy, and One Shot, which has been optioned for a major motion picture by Paramount Pictures. His debut, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and the Barry Awards for Best First Mystery. Foreign rights in the Jack Reacher series have sold in thirty-nine territories. Child, a native of England and former television writer, lives in New York City, where he is at work on his eleventh Jack Reacher thriller. From AudioFile Six hours after a sniper killed five passersby coming out of an office building in the Indiana heartland, the police had James Barr in custody. It was a slam dunk, an open-and-shut case. But Jack Reacher doesn't think so. It was too neat. Reacher has reasons for wanting to see Barr in prison or worse, so why does Barr ask for Reacher's help? Before Reacher can get any answers, Barr is beaten and left in a coma. Dick Hill's reading is tight and crisp, giving characters fully fleshed personalities and believable accents. As the case evolves into a full-fledged conspiracy, Hill puts tension into his reading to make this audiobook the ultimate disc-turner. S.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine Read more