One Shot - Lee Child

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One Shot

by
Lee Child

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	One Shot
Author:	Lee Child
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2005
Length:	466 pages
Availability:	One Shot - US
	One Shot - UK
	One Shot - Canada
	Folie furieuse - France
	Sniper - Deutschland
	La prova decisiva - Italia
	Un disparo - España

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

The ninth Jack Reacher novel
One Shot was made into the film Jack Reacher in 2012, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, and starring Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, -- and Werner Herzog

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Our Assessment:

B+ : well-constructed and paced, with some nice twists

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
The LA Times	.	3/7/2005	Dick Lochte
The NY Times	A	9/6/2005	Janet Maslin
The Telegraph	.	8/5/2005	Susanna Yager
The Washington Post	.	19/6/2005	Patrick Anderson

From the Reviews:

"Child has as much use for subplots as he does for local color. Reacher comes to town to make sure justice is served; the other characters are there to help or to harm him. (...) One Shot may not be the new Maltese Falcon, but if you’re looking for compelling, furiously paced escapist fiction that doesn’t stint on deduction, you should definitely follow murder suspect James Barr’s example and “Get Jack Reacher.”" - Dick Lochte, The Los Angeles Times

"However incompatible they may seem, Mr. Child's tough talk and thoughtful plotting make an ingenious combination, turning novels like his new One Shot into pure, escapist gold. Not for nothing do reviewers tell readers to disconnect the phone when the latest Reacher knockout comes along. (...) Mr. Child lets the story unfold calmly for a while. Then he brings together all these elements with a terrific climactic episode" - Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"There is the usual violent ending to this first-rate thriller, with the imperturbable Reacher meting out his brand of justice to the villains." - Susanna Yager, The Telegraph

"One Shot , ninth in the series, is less satisfying. Often I didn't believe what was happening. It becomes a question of how much leeway you give a writer -- how much, as they say, you're willing to suspend disbelief. (...) Child is a skillful writer, but at its worst this book reads like one of those really lame thrillers where bad guys who limp or have a scar on their face slink around wielding diabolical powers until the hero outfoxes them." - Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       One Shot begins with a mass-killing in Indiana, a sniper firing six shots from about thirty-five yards away, five of which neatly hit and kill five individuals (with the sixth hissing into an ornamental pool). He makes his getaway easily, too, -- but, it turns out, far from cleanly: it's not just the one spent shell case that rolls into a crack, he also leaves his fingerprints behind elsewhere. It doesn't take the police long to identify their suspect: forty-one-year-old James Barr, honorably discharged from the army fourteen years earlier. He's quickly arrested, and the evidence keeps piling up -- the van he drove, the rifle he used. It's a slam-dunk case, as everyone who sees the evidence -- including, eventually, Jack Reacher -- can't help but believe; it couldn't be any clearer.
       Barr doesn't say much when he's arrested, but he does claim: "They got the wrong guy" -- and his one demand is: "Get Jack Reacher for me". He doesn't explain who Reacher is, or why he wants him, but the police figure out that their paths might have overlapped in the military, where Reacher had been an officer in the military police. As to finding him -- well: "Reacher fell off the radar after 1997. Completely and totally". It's like he disappeared off the face of the earth.
       Readers of course know that Reacher became a vagabond after he left the army, traveling through the United States, leading a: "rootless invisible life". The lawyers representing Barr -- sought out by his sister, Rosemary, the only person close to him -- are also eager to find him, but as their investigator notes: "He's out of circulation". He is, in fact, quite a ways away at the time, in South Beach, Miami, but he sees a report about the killings, hears the name James Barr -- and sets out for Indiana.
       A nice twist is that Reacher hasn't come to help or save Barr; their paths did cross, back in the military, and Reacher has good reason to both think that Barr is capable of what's he's been accused of and for wanting Barr to get a fit punishment. Still, after he's spoken with the DA handling the case as well as Barr's lawyer and sister, a few things bother him. First off, that Barr specifically wanted him there -- though, given their history, as his lawyer tells Reacher: "Logically, you're the last person he should have asked for". And then there's the fact Reacher's previous experiences with Barr suggest Barr would have gladly confessed to such a deed -- and yet:

This time the forensics seem to be a total slam dunk. But he's denying it.

Child soon introduces other characters as well, shadowing the lawyer and Reacher -- first a Grigor Linsky, who reports to 'the Zec':

The Zec was the man he worked for. It wasn't just Zec. It was the Zec. It was a question of respect. The Zec was eighty years old, but he still broke arms if he smelled disrespect.

       Clearly, there's more to the killings than just Barr going on a loner-spree. And the Zec and his literally shadowy underlings are keeping close tabs on Reacher and Barr's lawyer and their activities, surely to make sure that they can't dig too deep and start to figure things out.
       Indeed, soon enough they try to get Reacher out of the way, setting him up to get properly beaten up -- but since they only sic five men on him that doesn't work, and so once this plan A fails things escalate. Soon Reacher has to lay low, sought by both the police and the shadowy forces he realizes don't want him to be sniffing around.
       Matters are also complicated by the fact that the prosecutor on the case -- DA A.A.Rodin -- is the father of the lawyer representing Barr, Helen. And there's the question of whether someone in law enforcement is passing information to the very well-informed bad guys ....
       Barr himself is soon out of commission, spending most of the novel in hospital, first in a coma but then even when he wakes up with a conveniently fuzzy memory. And even if he does have answers, it sure looks like he is trying to protect his sister, knowing how ruthless those who are behind all this can be.
       It's a bit of a shame that it takes so long before Reacher realizes:

     "We missed something very obvious," Reacher said. "We spent all this time looking down the wrong end of the gun. All we've done is look at who fired it."
     "What should we have done ?"
     "We should have thought harder."

       The killings were perfectly executed -- even down to the bullet that missed -- even as, for example, the sniper's choice of nest wasn't the obvious one, one of the few details that Barr confirms to Reacher. With such precision, and with someone else behind at least the ordering of the shooting, the obvious question becomes whether the victims -- or at least one or some of them -- were actual targets, and whether there was an actual motive behind the act. Child eventually does have his characters follow that trail, but more could have been done with that.
       Randomness comes into play several times in the story, beginning with what looks like a random set of killings. But, as Child has Reacher point out, randomness is a funny thing -- and: "True randomness is very hard for humans to achieve". (For all his awareness of that, Reacher also boasts: "I'm a lucky man. Always have been, always will be" -- but then arguably, much of the time he does make his own luck .....) Details emerge that begin to paint a bigger picture, including what exactly Barr's role in the commission of the crime was.
       Quite early on already 'the Zec' understands:

"It depends entirely on the soldier," the Zec said. "It depends entirely on his tenacity and imagination."

If it depends on Reacher -- the solider -- ... well, readers know how that will go. It does come down to a big showdown, in the Zec's well-protected lair. Reacher doesn't go it quite alone -- from lawyer Helen to an eager news reporter whom he convinces of his story and a few others, he assembles a motley but adequate support-team. The showdown is a pretty typical Reacher-novel-finale, but actually a bit more measured (and thus slightly more plausible) than most. And the various plot points are nicely tied up, the various discoveries made along the way neatly slotted into place in explaining it all.
The bad guys in One Shot stick out as rather cartoonishly over-the-top (and, despite the backstory Child does eventually offer about 'the Zec', underdeveloped -- not least regarding their larger criminal enterprise) and it's a shame the who-were-the-victims angle wasn't explored more closely from the beginning, but mostly this is a very solid and very well-paced thriller. The details -- especially about the shooting -- are particularly good, and well-used, as Reacher discovers and figures out more of the complex picture, and the various cat and mouse games are effectively handled (i.e. don't come across as too silly, as they sometimes can in the Reacher-novels).

- M.A.Orthofer, 20 July 2025

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Links:

One Shot:

Dell publicity page
Bantam publicity page
Blanvalet publicity page
TEA publicity page

Reviews:

Jack Reacher - the movie:

IMDb page

Lee Child:

Official site
How Jack Reacher Was Built by John Lanchester

Other books by Lee Child under review:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
See Index of Contemporary British fiction
See Index of Series and Sequels under review

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About the Author:

British author Lee Child was born in 1954.

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