Lee Child's "61 Hours" Trivia Quiz

Answer: A lawyer goes to meet with a prisoner

It turns out that the lawyer was an unwilling go-between for the bad guys. Of course, the poor lawyer eventually ends up dead. A tour bus carrying Reacher and a bunch of old folks to Mount Rushmore does crash early on in the book (it skids out of control trying to avoid the lawyer's car, as a matter of fact), but this happens after we read about the lawyer's "interview."

Answer: Minimalism

Lean and clean, spare and forceful, this is language that packs a punch as powerful as Jack Reacher, our tough guy lead character.

Some examples:

In just two pages, the paragraph "The guy said nothing." appears eight times.

In the climactic scene, the following sentence whips the action to a breathless frenzy: "He charged on, three [stairs] at a time, four at a time, not breathing, anaerobic, up and up and up, round and round and round, not counting, just running, running, running, climbing, churning, hammering, straining, hurling himself toward the surface."

In one section, the following phrases appear as complete paragraphs: "One minute past eight." "Nothing happened." "Two minutes past eight." "Nothing happened." "No sound." "No siren." "No one came." Wow.

Also worth mentioning about "61 Hours" are the recurring devices that Child uses to describe time ("Five to eight in the morning. Forty-four hours to go.") and place ("Seventeen hundred miles south ..."). These little hooks are slick, cool, and greatly enhance the story's suspense.

Answer: None of these

Sorry to say, there are no steamy love scenes in "61 Hours." Mrs. Salter is a retired librarian and teacher, and is therefore an unlikely candidate for one of Reacher's conquests. He does, however, have some interesting conversations with her. The Petersons are more or less happily married, and there is no attraction between Reacher and Mrs. Peterson. Reacher does find Susan Turner attractive, but she is in Virginia and he is in South Dakota.

They interact solely by phone, flirting playfully. Reacher eventually gets Susan to admit that she is unmarried.

Answer: He is only four feet eleven inches tall

As one of Child's classic villains, Plato is suitably bitter, cruel, sadistic, amoral, and ruthless. When one man was stupid enough to refer to Plato as a midget, Plato saw to it that the offender was knocked out and taken to a hospital, where surgeons cut off his legs below the knees, making this poor soul's new height four feet ten inches.

The man later received a "gift" from Plato, along with a "request" that the gift be displayed permanently. You can probably guess that the gift was a tank filled with formaldehyde and containing his recently amputated legs and feet.

Answer: A drug deal

Drugs--specifically, methamphetamines--turn out to be an important theme in the book. We eventually find out that Plato is a drug lord who has become wildly rich from selling drugs to Americans. The money is less important to him, though, than the thrills he gets by watching people become slaves to their habits.

Reacher admires Mrs. Salter's principles and comes to like her personality. This makes it all the worse for Reacher when she dies. Rage, shame, and guilt nearly overwhelm him, but he is able, with help from Susan Turner, to subdue these emotions and focus on what he needs to do next.

Answer: An orphanage for children who survived nuclear war

Reacher and Susan Turner work together to uncover the facility's purpose.

Consisting of an underground system of tunnels in the form of connected rings and spokes, the "orphanage" was never completed. The Air Force at some point apparently decided to use the tunnels to store war surplus, then forgot they had even put it there. Conveniently for Plato and his minions, the surplus turned out to be thousands of pounds of pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine. So what was the Air Force doing with meth? Reacher explains that they gave it to WWII bomber pilots to keep them focused and awake.

Answer: Police Chief Thomas Holland

Holland was being threatened and coerced, but Reacher doesn't care: "No excuse. There were other ways of dealing with it." Holland replies with, "I know. I'm sorry." And Reacher's poignant judgment: "That's it? Three dead and you're sorry?" After exposing Holland's methods and motives in a quasi-Sherlock Holmes-ian monologue, Reacher deals with Holland appropriately, swiftly, and mercifully.

The tour bus driver was arrested for the lawyer's death, but Reacher quickly exonerated him.

Answer: The Russian

Of course, Plato was planning to double-cross the Russian, but the Russian buys off some of Plato's henchmen and beats him to the punch.

Answer: Susan Turner, commander of the 110th Military Police, leaves for Afghanistan

All of these things happen in the last two chapters of the book, but the very last person we see is Susan Turner, apparently carrying a torch for the likely incinerated Jack Reacher, leaving her office to go to an assignment in Afghanistan.

Answer: Worth Dying For

The first fourteen books in the series followed a strict pattern of release dates, that is, one new book per year, usually in the spring. "Worth Dying For" was the first to break that pattern, appearing in the autumn of 2010, just a few short months after "61 Hours." Child didn't dare keep his faithful readers in suspense for a whole year about Reacher's fate!

"Persuader" is book seven in the Reacher series, while "Gone Tomorrow" is book thirteen. The beauty of this series is that you can read it in any order you choose (if you don't count "61 Hours" and "Worth Dying For"). "Missing Persons" is a title by novelist Stephen White.