| 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.
A Hitchockian escalation of tension...brings to mind another iconic Jack (Bauer, from the TV series 24)...works disturbingly well.
Daily Telegraph
A storyteller who knows a lot about style...Watching the clock underscores the tension that Child builds so well. You do and you don't want it all to end.
Sydney Morning Herald
As always with Child, the hook is smart, the plot possibilities are given a thorough workout, and the tension bites as hard as the South Dakota windchill.
Christopher Fowler Financial Times
Craftiest and most highly evolved of Lee Child's electrifying Jack Reacher books...That legend of a tough, cerebral drifter, a latter-day 6-foot-5-inch cowboy...has now taken on a life of its own..The truth about Reacher gets better and better.
Janet Maslin New York Times
Explodes into one of the best thrillers I've read for ages. Lee Child is a Brit who has managed to becomes more American than most US authors...61 Hours is destined to do big things...Superb stuff!
Independent on Sunday
Child spins a great yarn, his descriptive powers are austere yet glorious...He could take out Bond, Dirty Harry, Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt with both hands tied behind his back. And then sleep with their girlfriends two at a time before getting the last bus out of town. All without untying his hands. The Reacher novels are literary beat-'em-ups for the pre-console generation. They are, like the hero, simply irresistible.
Sun
It is always a pleasure to read another Jack Reacher novel. A kind of highlight of the year, really. There is only one downside. It's all the other people hanging around your house saying things like, 'Oy! Haven't you finished with the Reacher yet?'
Andy Martin Independent
In many ways it's the most climactic Reacher ever...There's a sequel planned for this autumn. Can't wait!
Mirror
One of the many delights of Child's extraordinary sequencewof novels is Reacher's 360-degree intelligence...there are now Lee Child copycats aplenty. Save your money for the real thing.
Guardian
This is the first of Lee Child's popular Jack Reacher novels I've read. I'd assumed they were merely the macho adventures of a boneheaded lone wolf:lots of guns and explosions and little to occupy the mind. Well, I was wrong: there's also an abundance of intelligence and surprise. 61 Hours is a first-class thriller...Child delivers it brilliantly.
Mail on Sunday
Reacher is an iconic modern thriller hero: the ultimate loner...won't disappoint the British-born Child's millions of fans...Fast, compelling and with that nugget of poignancy that sets the hero apart.
Daily Mail
Lee Child certainly knows by now how to screw up the tension with excruciating precision, but here excels himself with a beautifully paced tale that leaves the reader breathless with suspense as the final hours tick away.
Irish Independent
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