A Wanted Man

Last updated

A Wanted Man
A Wanted Man (Child novel).jpg
Author Lee Child
LanguageEnglish
Series Jack Reacher
Release number
17
Genre Thriller novel
Publisher Bantam Press (UK)
Delacorte Press (US)
Publication date
30 August 2012
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardcover, paperback), audio, eBook
Pages304
ISBN 978-0385344333
OCLC 772137972
Preceded by The Affair  
Followed by Never Go Back  

A Wanted Man is the seventeenth book in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. It was published on 30 August 2012 in the United Kingdom, [1] Australia, & New Zealand [2] and on 11 September 2012 in the USA & Canada. [1] A Wanted Man won the "Thriller & Crime Novel of the Year" award by the National Book Awards. [3]

Contents

The book returns to the present timeline, continuing where Worth Dying For left off, whereas the preceding novel, The Affair , told some episode of the main character's past. The novel, like a majority of the Jack Reacher novels, is set in third-person point of view.

Plot

The novel opens with Jack Reacher, whose nose is broken from his last adventure Worth Dying For , heading for Virginia, trying to get a ride out of Nebraska, hitch-hiking in the middle of the night, without any car stopping for him. After an hour and a half of waiting, two men and a woman let him climb in and even ask him to help drive part of the way. They introduce themselves as Donald McQueen, Alan King, and Karen Delfuenso. Reacher notices that the car's occupants tell him lies for no obvious reason and that the woman is very nervous. They ask him to take the wheel for a while as they rest from shifts at driving. McQueen and King sleep, though Karen does not. They pass two roadblocks where the highway police are searching for one or two males in dark suits who killed a man and took off in a Mazda. The Mazda is subsequently found with fingerprints; it is then believed by FBI agent Julia Sorenson and Sheriff Victor Goodman that after the murders the men went to a car park behind a nightclub, where they kidnapped a cocktail waitress Delfuenso and stole her car, an Impala.

Karen repeatedly blinks, giving Reacher coded messages—which he manages to decode—and learns that the two men in the car are the wanted people the police are looking for and that Karen has been taken as hostage. Sorenson and Goodman's theory is proven correct after they visit a gas station and examine the security camera footage facing across the street. After a stop for gas Reacher buys coffee for the group, but before doing so uses the store's phone to alert the cops. Sorenson, the closest to the area, drives over, but by then the group have left. McQueen becomes suspicious and tells Reacher to use his bank card which is a fraud to rent rooms for the night. In the motel lobby McQueen fires his gun at Reacher and misses. McQueen, King, and Karen flee.

Reacher is apprehended by Sorenson, whose boss wants Reacher arrested. Sorenson is about to do so, but gets a call that a vehicle is on fire nearby. Going to the location, they find a car on fire with an unidentified body in it. They assume it is the body of Karen Delfuenso. On the way to Sorenson's office, Reacher manages to pull her gun from her holster and tells her to drop him off a mile away from the office. However, Sorenson is told by Goodman that Lucy Delfuenso, Karen's daughter, has been kidnapped. Goodman explains he had told Lucy her mother was missing she was at her friend's neighbor's house, and suggested Lucy's friend's mother stay home. Lucy's friend's mother went to work, leaving the children home alone, and Lucy was kidnapped. They also later learn that some terrorist threat against the United States might be involved in these events. Then they learn that the whole case has been closed as if it never happened, for some sort of over-riding national security reason. Reacher and Sorenson agree together to try to solve the case and catch the fugitives.

Karen has not been killed as expected but reveals herself as an undercover agent with the FBI, and says that the body in the car was King. The other fugitive, McQueen, is also an undercover special agent with the FBI who tried to infiltrate a terrorist group called Wadia which has threatened to pollute a huge drinking water aquifer with nuclear waste. Reacher, Lucy, Sorenson, Karen, and the eyewitness from the beginning of the novel have all ended locked up in some sort of witness-protection compound. Knowing that McQueen has gone off radar, Sorenson, Karen, and Reacher escape the compound to try to save him. They are eventually able to locate the terrorists' hiding place, a huge ex-army missile storage bunker. Sorenson is killed by a sniper. Despite Karen's protests, Reacher enters and kills the gang one by one, in retaliation for Sorenson.

He comes upon Peter King, Alan King's older brother, who wants revenge for his brother's death. McQueen might have been killed otherwise if he had not lied and said Reacher killed Alan. Reacher plays along and soon manages to kill Peter, but the thin cord binding McQueen takes time to saw through with a key and the remaining members of the group are all about to attack. Crucially assisted by Karen Delfuenso at a fatal juncture, Reacher, McQueen and Karen successfully escape. The terrorist threat turns out not to be as serious as was thought, because the group only claimed to possess damaging material. In reality, there only existed some empty trailers from the time of the cold war that had been forgotten in the bunker, but had never been used for nuclear material. However the non-existent radioactive material was being used by Wadia as a sort of virtual currency they could use in trading with terrorist groups, making their whole establishment a terrorist network's "bank". Before setting out for Virginia Reacher explains to McQueen the answer to a question Reacher had asked Alan King earlier in the book: "Can you talk non-stop for a minute without using the letter A?". The answer is you can do it by counting from one to one hundred. The first letter "A" occurring in "one hundred and one".

Characters

Continuation

The novel is a sequel to Worth Dying For , despite its predecessor being The Affair which is a prequel novel. The following novel is Never Go Back and is a sequel, not prequel, to Worth Dying For and A Wanted Man in the series continuity, unlike The Affair.

Response

The book was a commercial success selling over a million copies worldwide and was No. 1 on many booksellers' lists for numerous weeks. However, it received mixed reviews. Many enjoyed the book, but thought its ending was too detailed and disagreed with its criticism of the United States' comprehensive security response to 9/11. The novel also criticized the CIA for being inept and lazy, while the FBI is given a far more favorable judgment.

Related Research Articles

<i>Patriot Games</i> 1987 novel by Tom Clancy

Patriot Games is a thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and published in July 1987. Without Remorse, released six years later, is an indirect prequel, and it is chronologically the first book featuring Jack Ryan, the main character in most of Clancy's novels. The novel focuses on Ryan being the target of Irish terrorist group Ulster Liberation Army for thwarting their kidnapping attempt on the Prince and Princess of Wales in London. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. A film adaptation, starring Harrison Ford as Ryan, premiered on June 5, 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pretty Boy Floyd</span> American bank robber

Charles Arthur Floyd, nicknamed Pretty Boy Floyd, was an American bank robber. He operated in the West and Central states, and his criminal exploits gained widespread press coverage in the 1930s. He was seen positively by the public because it was believed that during robberies he burned mortgage documents, freeing many people from their debts. He was pursued and killed by a group of Bureau of Investigation agents led by Melvin Purvis. Historians have speculated as to which officers were at the event, but accounts document that local officers Robert "Pete" Pyle and George Curran were present at his fatal shooting and also at his embalming. Floyd has continued to be a familiar figure in American popular culture, sometimes seen as notorious, other times portrayed as a tragic figure, even a victim of the hard times of the Great Depression in the United States. Floyd is viewed by many as a prime example of a real life anti-hero.

<i>The FBI Story</i> 1959 film

The FBI Story is a 1959 American crime drama film starring James Stewart, and produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Richard L. Breen and John Twist is based on a book by Don Whitehead.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John McClane</span> Character in Die Hard, played by Bruce Willis

John McClane Sr. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Die Hard franchise, based on Joe Leland from Roderick Thorp's action novel Nothing Lasts Forever. McClane was portrayed in all five films by actor Bruce Willis, and he is known for his sardonic one-liners, including the famous catchphrase in every Die Hard film: "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker". Per the franchise's name, he confounds repeated attempts to kill him, driving his enemies to distraction, by adding up and exploiting dumb luck.

<i>The Negotiator</i> (novel) 1989 novel by Frederick Forsyth

The Negotiator is a crime novel by English writer Frederick Forsyth, first published in 1989. The story includes a number of threads that are slowly woven together. The central thread concerns a kidnapping that turns into a murder and the negotiator's attempts to solve the crime.

<i>Red Dragon</i> (novel) 1981 novel by Thomas Harris

Red Dragon is a psychological horror novel by American author Thomas Harris, first published in 1981. The story follows former FBI profiler Will Graham, who comes out of retirement to find and apprehend an enigmatic serial killer nicknamed "the Tooth Fairy". The novel introduces the character Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer whom Graham reluctantly turns to for advice and with whom he has a dark past.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been a staple of American popular culture since its christening in 1935. That year also marked the beginning of the popular "G-Man" phenomenon that helped establish the Bureau's image, beginning with the aptly titled James Cagney movie, G Men. Although the detective novel and other police-related entertainment had long enthralled audiences, the FBI itself can take some of the credit for its media prominence. J. Edgar Hoover, the Bureau's "patriarch", took an active interest to ensure that it was not only well represented in the media, but also that the FBI was depicted in a heroic, positive light and that the message, "crime doesn't pay", was blatantly conveyed to audiences. The context, naturally, has changed profoundly since the 1930s "war on crime", and especially so since Hoover's death in 1972.

<i>Listening Woman</i> 1978 book by Tony Hillerman

Listening Woman is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the third in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, first published in 1978. The novel features Joe Leaphorn.

<i>Die Trying</i> (novel) Novel by Lee Child

Die Trying is the second novel in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. It was published in 1998 by Bantam Press in the UK and by Putnam in the US. It is written in the third person.

<i>The Visitor</i> (Child novel) 2000 novel by Lee Child

The Visitor is the fourth book in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. It was published in 2000 by Bantam Press in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the book was released under the title Running Blind. It is written in the second and third person. In the novel, retired Army military police officer Jack Reacher must race against time to catch a sophisticated serial killer who is murdering a group of female soldiers, but leaving no forensic evidence.

<i>Along Came a Spider</i> (film) 2001 film by Lee Tamahori

Along Came a Spider is a 2001 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Lee Tamahori. It is the second installment in the Alex Cross film series and a sequel to the 1997 film Kiss the Girls, with Morgan Freeman and Jay O. Sanders reprising their roles as detective Alex Cross and FBI-agent Kyle Craig. The screenplay by Marc Moss was adapted from the 1993 novel of the same title by James Patterson, but many of the key plot elements of the book were eliminated. The film was a box office success, despite receiving mixed-to-negative reviews from critics like its predecessor.

"Twilight" is the 23rd and last episode in the second season, and the 46th overall episode, of the American crime drama television series NCIS. It first aired on CBS in the United States on May 24, 2005. The episode is written by John Kelley and directed by Thomas J. Wright, and was seen by 14.74 million viewers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Bauer</span> Fictional character

Kimberly 'Kim' Bauer is a fictional character played by Elisha Cuthbert on the television series 24. She is portrayed as the only daughter of the show's main character, Jack Bauer and his wife Teri. She is a former CTU analyst turned field agent and was a main cast member for the show's first three seasons and has made main guest appearances in other seasons.

<i>The Golden Gate</i> (MacLean novel) 1976 novel by Alistair MacLean

The Golden Gate is a novel written by the Scottish author Alistair MacLean. It was first released in the United Kingdom by Collins in 1976 and later in the same year by Doubleday in the United States.

<i>Cross Fire</i> (novel) 2010 novel by James Patterson

Cross Fire is the 17th book of James Patterson's Alex Cross series. In the novel, Kyle Craig has come back for one final scare to finally kill Alex Cross, but Alex has a special day ahead of him, one that concerns Bree and his relationship. The novel was released in hardcover, paperback, and audio book on November 15, 2010. It was preceded by I, Alex Cross and was followed by Kill Alex Cross. The book sees Alex marrying Bree after proposing to her in the previous book; the book also sees the final appearance of Kyle Craig, who dies by shooting an oxygen tank, killing him and two cops before he can be sent to prison again by Alex.

<i>Kill Alex Cross</i> 2011 novel by James Patterson

Kill Alex Cross is the 18th novel in the Alex Cross series by James Patterson, following fictional detective Alex Cross as he tries to solve two crimes – one involving the president's kidnapped children and the other a case of someone poisoning the water supply.

Jack Reacher is a series of novels, novellas and short stories by British author Jim Grant under the pen name Lee Child. As of January 2022, the series includes 28 books and a short story collection. The book series chronicles the adventures of Jack Reacher, a former major in the United States Army Military Police Corps now a drifter, roaming the United States taking odd jobs and investigating suspicious and frequently dangerous situations, some of which are of a personal nature. The Reacher series has maintained a schedule of one book per year, except for 2010, when two installments were published.

<i>The Obsidian Chamber</i> Thriller novel - Special Agent Pendergast series

The Obsidian Chamber is a thriller novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The book was released on October 18, 2016 by Grand Central Publishing and is the sixteenth book in the Special Agent Pendergast series.

References

  1. 1 2 "A Wanted Man (Hardcover)". leechild.com . 3 June 2012. Archived from the original on 15 June 2012. Retrieved 3 June 2012.
  2. "A Wanted Man (Trade Paperback)". leechild.com . 3 June 2012. Archived from the original on 15 June 2012. Retrieved 3 June 2012.
  3. Alison Flood (5 December 2012). "EL James comes out on top at National Book awards". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 December 2012.