The Hard Way

Jack Reacher, Book 10

By: Lee Child

Narrated by: Jeff Harding

Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Jack Reacher is alone, the way he likes it.

He watches a man cross a New York street and drive away in a Mercedes. The car contains $1 million of ransom money. Reacher's job is to make sure it all turns out right - money paid, family safely returned.

But Reacher is in the middle of a nasty little war where nothing is simple.
What started on a busy New York street explodes three thousand miles away, in the sleepy English countryside.

Reacher's going to have to do this one the hard way.

Although the Jack Reacher novels can be listened to in any order, The Hard Way is 10th in the series.

©2006 Lee Child (P)2009 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"This is storytelling of the highest order: lean, laconic, laced with tension." (Evening Standard)

Gripping -One of his best

Any additional comments?

Quite gritty and gruesome in parts.
Lee Child in his previous books was starting to get a bit stale,
however in this book he seems to have got his inspiration from Martina Cole rather than Sandra Brown.About time.
Well worth using a credit.

Another Reacher Fix

If the series gets under your skin then this will not disappoint. If you are an addict, it will stop the cravings for a while. Predictable yes, JH is, now of course, Jack with his laconic delivery. Lots of 'I knew it' moments but that's fine for the genre.

Jeff Harding IS Reacher

I really enjoyed this Reacher story - I suspect in the past I may not have given Reacher the concentration he needs but this one was fun especially as it ended on my home turf and I could relate much better to what was going on. Jeff Harding nails Reacher for me - he does characters very well too and once you concentrate it is so easy to be swept into the narrative. Thanks to a son who keeps choosing Reacher books, I will go back and concentrate more on the other Reacher titles.

Good Story, Excellent Narration

I've nothing much to add about the plot or character, and if you like Lee Child in general then this one won't disappoint. But I think this is the first Lee Child book I've listened to when I realised just how talented a narrator Jeff Harding is. His voice is quite distinctive and in earlier narrations I didn't warm to it 100%, but now that I am more accustomed to it I am starting to appreciate his abilities. He does an excellent job of the various accents required by this book, to the extent of providing credible regionally distinct British English accents as well as the more common (in Child) American accents. Unlike rather many others, Harding doesn't sound like an American doing a fake British accent, and I wanted to hug him for it. The hardest requirement for a male narrator in this book is a husky voiced female, and even that one wasn't bad. So I'd say that Harding brought this from a 4 to a 5 star book for me.

This may seem petty........

This may seem petty, but there is nothing worse than listening to the narrators mouth noises.

Excellent - couldn't put it 'down'.

I admit I am biased and am an admirer of Jeff Harding as a narrator; this is my fourth Jack Reacher novel and I loved loved loved it. I was subconsciously expecting many things as the story unfolded however Lee Child managed to put enough subtle twists and turns that created expectations that still turned out to be wrong (on my part!) Jeff Harding did an outstanding job with accents & voice inflections and female voices. I highly recommend this to any Lee Child fan as I couldn't put this down - I listened on the treadmill, in the car (stuck the Wiggles on so the children wouldn't talk to me) - even did my accounts with it on. Brilliant.

listened in 1 sitting

Love Lee Childs! The twists are fabulous, the action was excellent and the story moved along in a way which was gripping, detailed with terror edged scenes which I can still visualize! !

Awful narration spoiled a good book.

Lost all interest in this one when a female character called Palling was bewilderingly given an appalling voice by Mr Harding. I got into audiobooks listening to Jeff Harding reading the Jason Bourne books from Robert Ludlum and only had great memories of that experience. How can a professional actor and voice man possibly think that by merely whispering he is interpreting the character of this woman?
It really is such a stupid and silly voice he uses, it was just not possible to maintain the interest in this, otherwise entertaining story. Belief in the story is everything in an audiobook and this rediculous voice shattered any chance I had for taking it seriously.
His own normal straight male voice would have been so much more believable and easier to follow. Not only was his idea of a sexy female voice as daft as a brush, it was so quiet it was hard to understand at times. I'm surprised and disappointed in the narrator and will be careful not to make the mistake of buying any more of his work. No complaints about the story, author, or Jack Reacher though. I just hope future narrations will not be so ludicrously flippant and unbelievable.

Good beginning but implausible ending

I loved the first half but found the second part so implausible. Lee Child really needs to take into account that most people have cellphones. Jeff Harding is a great narrator, but I found this Jack Reacher story disappointing.

Jack is as usuall, not very bright

Very soon it was obvious what happen, but for Jack it took almost whole book to realize it.
Hes behavior is "one brain cell" kind, not asking any questions