Lee Child - Die Trying

This, the second Jack Reacher novel, follow a pattern that I suspect will become common place in the series. Jack Reacher randomly finds himself in a violent and unusual situation, which requires him to use his skills to violently escape. In his way will be a succession of dangerous enemies and their less than able henchmen. At various times Reacher will utilise his military knowledge, brawn and brains to defeat these enemies, while the reader gets to learn about a variety of military hardware.

It's all, remarkably satisfying, and Die Trying is perhaps apposite this week, given that its "bad guys" are far-right, Nazi, American militas living in the backwoods of Montana. Reacher finds himself kidnapped alongside a young woman, who turns out to be with the FBI and an important target for the Nazis. The Nazis aim to use her in their elaborate, and completely unfeasible plan to secede from the United States, and build a new country on the lines of the US constituion as they interpret it. It's all very Make America Great again.

Luckily Reacher is no proto-Trumper and he blows up, machine guns, and fights his way back to a vision of liberal America that never really existed either. Along the way he has sex after burying the crucifed corpse of someone who defied the milita - which proves that it takes all sorts really. It also has the least exciting cross-America road trip in literarture. Die Trying's a classic thriller packed full of silliness and escapism - perhaps not as polished as the first one. But that doesn't really matter.

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