Child, Baldacci try different paths to thrills
Jack Reacher: genealogist! Based on that pitch, you could be forgiven for thinking that in “Past Tense,” his 24th straight novel about Reacher – virtuous, laconic, bone-shattering loner – author Lee Child had run out of ideas.
Is anyone going to pay to watch Tom Cruise looking through census records at his local library? (Don’t answer that, I’m making a point.) Much better to jump into a new series – the way another megastar novelist, David Baldacci, does in “Long Road to Mercy.”
But as befits these two slingers of suspense, it doesn’t quite work out as you’d expect. In fact Child’s book (Delacorte, 382 pp.,
★★★) is sinuous, tight and addictive, while Baldacci’s (Grand Central, 401 pp.,
★★☆) is talky, meandering and tired.
Baldacci has written numerous best sellers, creating simple, appealing characters involved in big stakes, often in staccato one-sentence paragraphs. In his new novel, he does start off with a strong lead and an unforgettable back story.
When she was 6, Atlee Pine watched as a man came into her bedroom and took her sister, Mercy. As the book begins, Pine has found sanctuary in the FBI – she’s a tough agent, preferring to work as far from others as possible, her current beat a remote office close to the Grand Canyon – and is taking to the road to visit the death row prisoner she suspects of having kidnapped her sister.
Unfortunately, that’s only a tease from Baldacci, to be pursued in other books. Almost immediately, Pine returns to a less personal case; deep in the canyon, a stolen mule has been found dead, and its rider wasn’t just another tourist. Soon Pine is running rogue, plucky secretary in tow, unsure whether they can trust even the FBI itself, with Russia and North Korea (both!) on their tails.
“Long Road to Mercy” is all over the place, overstuffed, brief when it needs more explanation and expansive when it doesn’t. It’s hard not to laugh near the end of the book when a character asks Pine: “So, how did thing turns out with the nukes and stuff ?” It’s about the level of interest the author shows in his own improbable plot line.
Compare that with the sleek minimalism of Child’s tale. In “Past Tense,” Reacher is in Maine, planning his long trek south for the winter, fueled as usual by superhuman amounts of coffee. But a road sign catches his eye. It’s for Laconia, New Hampshire, the town his father came from. He hesitates – he was looking forward to warm weather – before deciding to stop for a day and poke around.
Reacher is not a subtle poker. He immediately senses something off in Laconia, first in a strange hotel he passes, then in the lack of records about his family. What ensues is a pair of entwined stories, handled with adroit calm by Child, each of which lets Reacher use his unique skills as a brilliant former military cop to investigate them: Sherlock Holmes set to ultraviolent mode.
Child has his own flaws. There’s often a distracting sameness to the logic-driven interior lives of his characters, and Reacher’s incursion into that odd Laconia hotel directly recycles much of the dark web material of Child’s superb “Make Me” from 2015, a series highlight.
But the concision, procedural chops and terse, surprising action of “Past Tense” make it a fantastic read.
What does it have that Baldacci’s book doesn’t? The answer is boring: Child’s just better.
They used to say that Bear Bryant could beat you with his players, then turn around and beat you with yours. Baldacci’s best is good, but I would read Child on anything. Mules, nukes, Arizona. Even, as it turns out, genealogy.