A Perfect Target

Child, Lee. One Shot. New York: Bantam Dell, Random House, Inc., 2005.

James Barr is forty-one years old. He's ex-military, a professional sniper by trade. Fairly quiet, he lives alone, with his dog as his sole companion. He's never made much of an impression on his neighbors or to those who know of him. He loves guns; practicing in nearby shooting ranges is a favorite pastime of his, as it reminds him of his days as a military sniper, long ago. Nobody knows much more than that about him, with the sole exception of an old military acquaintance of his. James Barr is the perfect target. And, after a matter of just hours, he's a convicted murderer, too. 

He's in Miami, Florida, but only for the moment. Invisible, undetected, untraceable; Jack Reacher is a man without existence. He lives with the bare necessities; his clothes, his surroundings. For the most part, his life is relatively normal as compared to that of most other single, middle-aged men. He lives hotel room by hotel room, not in a permanent residence. His past military experience helps him survive day to day, having hardwired him for the toughest of survival situations. His life is a steady, monotonous adventure. But when a man by the name of James Barr says, "Get Reacher for me," in the confinement of an interrogation room halfway across America, Reacher is already on his way there. 

"One Shot" captures the essence of cunning trickery and sophisticated planning. It's all simple. At least, it's supposed to be. A lone sniper formulaically wipes out five people in a public plaza. None of the victims are related. Six shots are fired, one into a nearby fountain to preserve the bullet for police to track. The evidence? All there. Sergeant Emerson, the local police chief, dubs the case an "absolute slam dunk". Then, just to tip it off the iceberg, a man nobody's heard of , going by the name of Jack Reacher, shows up and changes everything.

"I came here to bury him; he's done this before, and once was enough." Reacher makes his debut to the case with an immediate upheaval of his feelings through cynical yet underinformed sarcasm, a trait that he embodies frequently throughout the story. Upon his arrival, Reacher remembers little about James Barr—little more than that he murdered four people during a mission in Iraq. As it turned out the victims were all guilty of wreaking havoc on the town and its inhabitants. Given the circumstances, Barr was given honorable discharge and let off the hook, and went on to live a quiet life. But now this? Little does Reacher know of what really went down, however. The evidence is too clean. The sniper's location makes no logical sense, and after a visit to Barr's favorite shooting range, the targets Barr practiced on show perfect results every time. As he digs deeper and explores further, Reacher discovers that there's much more to the case than meets the eye.

Throughout the story, Lee Child focuses on the relationship between trust and truth. As Reacher progresses in his search for the real killers, they adapt and bend reality to the eyes of those who trust Reacher the most. Consequently, many innocent people die. Others are exposed to an underlying spider web of violence in their town that, previously, they were completely unaware of. This goes to show the repercussions of covering up stories with others; sometimes the old ones open more doors as they themselves fade away, and often the new alibis can cause even more damage than the ones they replace.

In his nearly decades-old series, Lee Child has been continually exploring the true values of humanity, and pushes the limits of the reader's intelligence by challenging their inferential skills continually. I found myself repeatedly looking back on every page, just to make sure I was absorbing all of the information I could manage.  By creating a feeling of deep immersion into the plot, Lee Child executes his mission perfectly; to prove to his audience that there's often a lot more to everyday life than they normally see or acknowledge on a day-to-day basis. 

And in the eyes of Jack Reacher, nothing ever goes unnoticed.