Gone Tomorrow

- By Lee Child

Careless and reckless, I want to fly and fly to a dream land. Can you imagine a place, when you walk on a street with tree shades and small lawns in front of every house? When you say a hi to everyone on the street, cheerfully waving at them and wishing them a good day, sometimes patting their puppies, because all are too familiar to you? When you look across and see the pretty boy on the other side of the street, the way your heart starts humming and the day looks bright and hopeful? You walk into the door and smell the aroma of fresh and strong coffee, hmmmmmm, what more do you want? Flying to your room and picking up your favourite couch book (yeah, well, there are few you can read on couch and there are others when you sit down and make notes ;)), playing rock music and pouring a mug of caffeine and settling on the couch to read the fantasy fiction and well, be lost in the world of suspense, thrill and adventure.

Hmmm, I have had an experience like that today. Well, the first part of cheerful streets, familiar people (shudder! No way!), pretty boy (boys and pretty can’t come in a sentence :D, so there are NO pretty boys, at least not in my dictionary), puppy (well, … I will be as far away from them as possible.. to be precise – borrowing Chandler’s words – my neck is exposed, they can sense my fear!) – this was just my stretch of feel good factor, but, the cup of coffee, the couch book, music and the world of suspense was for real. And the new book that took me through a tremendous experience and made me completely relaxed for the week was Lee Child’s “Gone Tomorrow”. Jack Reacher – yet again springs in with his impeccable logic and sheer heroism and takes me to the land of Afghan tribes, Osama bin Laden, US, UK, Soviet and to the year of 1983 – and into the life of a Delta veteran! As with every Lee Child novel, the logic and the logistics and the fights are dramatically simple, what with two hundred and seventy five pounds of muscle and thirteen years of military career and the tricks and smarts of a Military Police.

I desperately required some form of excitement and relaxation, with my mind being conked and crazy with no sleep for the past God knows how many days and adrenaline pumping for no reason in particular, the thrill of the novel took me to a different world and shunned me completely of my thoughts. Just filled it up with the terrain of grit, logic, wry humour and Jack no-middle-name Reacher! Starts of with the suspected suicide bomber and goes on to the deduction of a piece of information potentially embarrassing to U.S. Throw in NYPD, FBI, DoD, ex-Delta, ex-military and you got yourself a coup that even the caffeine stimuli is not required for the adrenaline rush through your nerves. Simple, logical, fairly unrealistic (well, I think so) and absolute time pass. I read it with a cup of coffee and a box of pizza and Linkin Park music and I did not realize that the day passed and I have not done anything fairly/remotely important!