61 HOURS by Lee Child - SIGNED FIRST EDITION UK BOOK
See all titles by Lee Child.
Winter in South Dakota. Blowing snow, icy roads, a tired driver. A bus skids and crashes and is stranded in a gathering storm. There's a small town twenty miles away, where a vulnerable witness is guarded around the clock. There's a strange stone building five miles further on, all alone on the prairie. There's a ruthless man who controls everything from the warmth of Mexico.
Jack Reacher hitched a ride in the back of the bus. A life without baggage has many advantages. And crucial disadvantages too, when it means facing the arctic cold without a coat. But he's equipped for the rest of his task.
He doesn't want to put the world to rights. He just doesn't like people who put it to wrongs.
Living the life of a nomad suits Jack Reacher just fine. No bags, no baggage and with just the clothes on his back, he boards a bus loaded with elderly travelers heading south through the Dakota Territory when a near collision with a car sends the bus sliding on ice and snow into a ditch.
With the weather growing more intense, Reacher, in a borrowed coat, gets drawn into the drama of another small town. Once again the locals need his special insight, logic, and sharply honed skills to face a situation growing more severe than the storm.
As Reacher watches his ride pull away it becomes clear to him that “South Dakota is the place you go when you run out of alternatives.” He stays to “serve and protect,” working with the local police to find a killer, protect a witness, and solve the mystery of a drug facility sitting in an abandoned military site.
61 Hours is both the title and the time that elapses in the pages of this breakneck thriller.
Lee Child expertly uses the Dakota winter weather to create a stark and dangerous environment to frame this story. Its frigid impact rises from the page like some threatening character testing Reacher’s usually sharp ability to “figure things out.” You can almost feel him shiver.
