Jack Reacher, the hero of ten or so Lee Child thrillers to date, is your average tough guy: six-foot-five, hard as nails, a crack shot, and as deadly with his hands as he is with a gun. He's ex-military . . . but not the special-forces type that usually turns up in this kind of story. He was an investigator with the military police, and he's ferociously smart in the classic cop fashion: he notices things about the world around him, including the people who inhabit it, and puts them together faster than anyone else in the room. Jack Reacher is what you'd get if tried to invent a character with Spenser's physicality, Lieutenant Columbo's brain, and Travis McGee's off-the-grid lifestyle. He's too good to be true, but big deal . . . he's great fun to read about.

Child is in his usual good form in this second installment of the series, combining action, suspense, and a bit of character development in agreeable proportions. He writes well on a sentence-to-sentence level, and the plot zips along nicely. Reacher intervenes in the attempted kidnapping of a woman on a busy Chicago street, and is taken by the kidnappers as well. He and the woman bond (in refreshingly novel and convincing ways) and he becomes determined to save her as well as himself. Just how hard this is going to be becomes slowly apparent as Child reveals (to Reacher and the reader) just who the intended kidnap victim is and why she's been taken. The climax of the book has Reacher (and others) trying to stop not just a kidnapping but a Gigantic Evil Plot by a Crazed Megalomaniac. There, alas, lies the book's principal drawback.

Reacher is fascinating when he has the opportunity to think as well as use his considerable skills at violence and mayhem, and when his connection with the Bad Guys and their Would-Be Victims is individual and personal. When he's pitted against a Gigantic Evil Plot, those opportunities diminish. He becomes a typical thriller hero: running, jumping, shooting, and hanging from helicopters. It's entertaining, but not *as* entertaining as watching him out-think as well as out-shoot and out-fight the Bad Guys. Most of the last third of "Die Trying" is Reacher vs. the Gigantic Evil Plot, and while it's handled competently it means that the book becomes more pedestrian and less interesting as it moves toward its climax. Tellingly, the best scenes *in* the latter part of the book involve Reacher and in contests more psychological than physical: against the head Bad Guy, against a minion who's guarding him, and against his own fear of enclosed spaces.

Thrillers about Gigantic Evil Plots always run the risk of tipping over the line into implausibility, but some thriller writers handle it better than others. Robert Ludlum was brilliant at it, Tom Clancy used to be, and Dale Brown has never been. Child is adequate, but only that. He's a good enough writer that you suspend your disbelief, but the Gigantic Evil Plot has more loose ends and implausible mechanisms showing than it should. The technical details of the Evil Deed that's supposed to be its climax make it, to my non-expert eyes, far more difficult to execute than it ought to be.

All that said, "Die Trying" was a satisfying thriller and (in its assured writing and terse dialogue) several steps ahead of most of what's out there these days. It was disappointing only to the extent that Lee Child can do (and has done) better by his unique hero.

Ford is the author of the Frank Corso and Leo Waterman series and a master at writing thrillers. Fans of Ford's writing might be disappointed when they find that he hasn't produced a new Corso story but Nameless Night is an excellent stand-alone, conspiracy thriller.

Paul Hardy has been a resident for seven years at Harmony House, a long-term care residential facility for physically and developmentally challenged adults. He had been found near death in a railroad card with the front of his head smashed in. He pushes another resident from the path of a distracted driver but is himself seriously injured. The wealthy driver feels guilty and pays for extensive reconstructive and plastic surgery. With the pressure on his brain relieved, Paul regains his cognitive and speech skills but not his memory. Except for a name, Wesley Allen Howard. Hellen Willis, the residency manager, decides to see what she can find out about Wesley Allen Howard and searches all the Internet search engines she can think of. And then things start to get weird.

The next morning several car-loads of men show up at Harmony House and proceed to terrorize the residents and threaten Hellen.They have badges and ID cards from "National somethingother." Given that they interecepted Helen's Internet searches it safe to assume that they are with the National Security Agency. They want to know why she was searching that particular name. They are also looking for someone but don't recognize Paul after his surgery. Unfortunately, one agent sees Helen mouthing the word "run" to Paul and the chase is on. Paul escapes and begins the search for his past.

You can find many news stories about the governments attempts to extend electronic surveillance you readers won't see the response to the Internet searches as a stretch. I sometimes wonder if government security agents read thrillers like this and consider that arrogance, threats, and bullying might not be the best approach to getting information. Fortunately for thriller writers it is still a workable formula (particularly if you fly). Ford is very good at peeling back the layers of Paul's past and revealing the nature of the conspiracy. The conspiracy itself is contemporary and not unrealistic

Jonathan Quinn is a free-lance cleaner working for a shadowy agency known as The Office. His job is to clean up after operations both in the literal sense as well as checking to see how an operation went. He is hired to go to Colorado to check on a fire that killed a man. Quinn is not informed of who the man was or why is is important. His job is to see if the fire was an accident as the authorities believe. Quinn determines that the fire covered up a murder. Quinn reports this to The Office and returns to his home in LA with his apprentice Nat. He doesn't report a heavy silver bracelet Nat finds in the ashes.

Not long after getting home, an assassin attempts to kill Quinn and Nat. They survive but find that The Office is under attack and its operatives are being picked off. Jonathan and Nat go on the run, looking for a place where the unknown enemy won't expect them to go. Super secret agency attacked, operative on the run isn't a new plot but Battles uses it to good effect to get the action going. I'm rather fond of this story line myself.

Quinn gathers clues and begins to uncover a conspiracy of with horrible implications. He appears to be a target but has no idea why.

If you like the Lee Child Reacher and Robert Ludlum Bourne stories then The Cleaner should appeal to you. As with lot of thrillers, you probably want to avoid examining details too carefully and just enjoy the ride. There were a couple of times when I started to think "huh? Why don't they just ..." but I was able to rein myself in.

The conspiracy is indeed horrible, the bad guys really unpleasant, and the plot plausible because you know there are nuts out there who would like to pull off something like it.

This is Brett Battles first novel and already he is working on a Jonathan Quinn

sequel. I am putting it on my watch list.

I dare you to read the first two pages and not want to finish the rest of the book.

Part Victorian murder mystery, part fantastical alternate history with a liberal dash of lexigraphical acrobatics, The Somnambulist combines a labyrinthine plot with haunting characters and an unreliable narrator which coalesces into an unexpected crescendo no one could anticipate.

The Somnambulist is a bald, mute giant of man who when pierced with swords does not bleed. His almost constant companion is Edward Moon, often referred to as the conjurer, with whom he conducts a magical act and solves the most mysterious of mysteries. When drawn into the enigmatic and horrifying deaths of two lechers, seemingly unconnected except for the implausible nature of their deaths, these crimes, however, and their monstrous solution are just the first strands in unraveling the gordian knot that is threatening the city of London.

At times like taking a midnight stroll through densely fogged streets and hearing ominous footsteps behind you, or standing slack-jawed at a bawdy freak show, or laughing raucously at a local pub Jonathan Barnes' The Somnambulist is reminiscent of authors of such note as Mary Shelley, Neil Gaiman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allen Poe and Michael Chabon.

This books is essential for all you Word Nerds out there as I learned 9 new words during the course of the book! [coruscating, sybaritism, postprandial, risible, penury, cognoscenti, minatory, ratiocination, eldritch] Their inclusion is not abrupt as in a Mad Lib, but fit seamlessly into the otherworldly elegance of the prose.

A solid 4 and a half, with its only caveat being that the end leaves you thinking "What the Deuce?!"