One Shot

Authors: Lee Child
Narrator: Dick Hill
Duration: 14H 33m
My Rating: ⭐🌑🌑🌑🌑
Tags: action - detective

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Terrible book. Lot’s of repetition and reflection, very small amount of action.

This is a rare example when movie was much better then the book.

Quotes:

‘Four types of people join the military,’ he said. ‘First, for people like me, it’s a family trade. Second, there are patriots, eager to serve their country. Third, there are people who just need a job. And fourth, there are people who want to kill other people. The military is the only place where it’s legal to do that. James Barr was the fourth type. Deep down he thought it would be fun to kill.’

Rule one, be on your feet and ready. Rule two, show them what they’re messing with. Rule three, identify the ringleader. There were five guys. Any five guys will have one ringleader, two enthusiastic followers, and two reluctant followers. Put the ringleader down, and both of the keen sidekicks, and it’s over. It never gets worse than three-on-one. Rule four: The ringleader is the one who moves first. Because, rule five: Never back off. But, rule six: Don’t break the furniture. Break furniture in a bar, and the owner starts thinking about his insurance policy, and insurance companies require police reports, and a patrolman’s first instinct is to throw everyone in jail and sort it out later. Which generally means: Blame it on the stranger

Rule eight: Assess and evaluate. The big guy was round and smooth and heavy, like a bull seal. Maybe ten years out of high school. An unbroken nose, no scar tissue on his brows, no misshapen knuckles. Therefore, not a boxer. Probably just a linebacker. So he would fight like a wrestler. He would be a guy who wants you on the ground.

He was an object of study for Mason and Niebuhr. Maybe the subject of future academic papers, even fame and reputation. Maybe he was a condition waiting to be named. Barr’s Syndrome. Same for Alan Danuta. Maybe to him the whole thing was a Supreme Court precedent waiting to be argued. A textbook chapter. A law school class. Indiana versus Barr. Barr versus the United States. They were all investing in a man they had never even seen.

People like to use computer metaphors now, but that’s all wrong. It’s not about hard drives and random access memory. The brain is entirely organic. It’s like throwing a bag of apples down the stairs. Some bruise, some don’t.

The tired thirty-year-old doctor on the sixth floor of the county hospital was finishing up his afternoon rounds. He had left James Barr for last. Partly because he wasn’t expecting any dramatic change in his condition, and partly because he didn’t care anyway. Looking after sick thieves and swindlers was bad enough, but looking after a mass-murderer was absurd. Doubly absurd, because straight after Barr was on his feet he was going to be laid back down on a gurney and some other doctor was going to come in and kill him. But ethical obligations are hard to ignore. As is habit. As is duty, and routine, and structure.

The Zee and he were bad people made worse by experience. Their shared suffering had conferred no grace or nobility. Quite the reverse. Men in their situation inclined towards grace and nobility had died within hours. But the Zee and he had survived, like sewer rats, by abandoning inhibition, by fighting and clawing, by betraying those stronger than themselves, by dominating those weaker. And they had learned. What works once works always.

Reacher was bigger than most human beings and in some ways quite clumsy, but he could be light on his feet when he needed to be and had always been good at covert pursuit. It was a skill born of long practice. Mostly it employed caution and anticipation. You had to know when your quarry was going to slow, stop, turn, check. And if you didn’t know, you had to err on the side of caution. Better to hide and fall ten extra yards behind than give yourself away.

Reacher switched his headlights off. He didn’t like to run with lights after daybreak. Just a subliminal thing, for the State Troopers camped out on the shoulders. Lights after dawn suggested all kinds of things, like fast through-the-night escapes from trouble hundreds of miles behind. The Mustang was already provocative enough. It was loud and aggressive and it was the kind of car that gets stolen a lot.

People bought pickup trucks as a first preference, then SUVs, then coupes, then convertibles. Regular sedans claimed a tiny market share, and most of them were Toyotas or Hondas or mid-size domestics. Full-size turnpike cruisers were very rare, and premium brands rarest of all.

Many books had been written about the Gulag, and documents had been discovered, and maps had been made, but the irony was that those who had participated had no idea where they had been. Nobody had told them. A camp was a camp, with wire, huts, endless forest, endless tundra, endless work. What difference did a name make?

Reacher knew from television commercials that computers operated at all kinds of gigahertz, which he assumed was pretty fast. But even so, Franklin’s screen stayed blank for a long, long time. There was a little graphic in the corner.

Random slayings always involved people described as lovely afterwards. Nobody ever said she was a rat-faced fink and I’m glad she’s dead. Whoever it was did us all a favour. That never happened.