Safe Enough: And Other Stories

by Lee Child

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Lee Child takes a step away from Jack Reacher with stories of assassins, gangsters and more — Safe Enough is your next favorite crime-fighting collection.

A USA Today bestseller

Pulse-pounding short stories from the author Michael Connelly calls "the best thriller writer in the world."

You know Jack Reacher. Now meet twenty more heroes and heavies from the brilliant mind of legendary crime author Lee Child.

A drug-dealing hit man feels that he must unburden his fears and guilt to a stranger in “Ten Keys.” A rookie cop in “Normal in Every Way” is assigned to the department’s file room, where he makes connections to historic dates that could lead to solving crimes. A methodical bodyguard quits his job when he’s outsmarted. A military mission is planned to perfection. A potential worker for the Manhattan Project is carefully surveilled by an FBI agent. A killer preys on other killers. Taken together, these stories are a riotous calamity of criminals and crime fighters; individually, they are expertly crafted, piercing tales that hit hard enough to leave a mark.

These twenty intriguing, thrilling, and rapid-fire fictions are intimate portraits of humanity at its best and worst, sure to please new and longtime fans of Child and to illuminate a side of the author’s work unknown to Reacher devotees. Featuring a colorful new introduction from the author, the collection stands as the first book written entirely by Child in four years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613165669
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	345
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Lee Child was born on October 29, 1954, in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British TV’s “golden age.” During his tenure his company made Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of forty as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars’ worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series.

Hometown:

Birmingham, England

Date of Birth:

1954

Place of Birth:

Coventry, England

Education:

Sheffield University

Website:

http://www.leechild.com

Editorial Reviews

07/29/2024

Child (the Jack Reacher series) compiles 20 previously published short stories in this brooding collection. Featuring mobsters, con men, assassins, and corrupt cops, Child’s self-described “very, very, very short novels” mostly focus on the worst of humanity. In “The .50 Solution,” a hit man is hired to kill a racehorse; in “My First Drug Trial,” an addict gets high before their moment of judgment; in “Me and Mr. Rafferty,” a serial killer leaves behind grisly clues in hopes of forging a connection with a detective. Throughout, Child gleefully toys with readers’ expectations, mirroring his duplicitous characters as he performs a series of satisfying bait-and-switches, most memorably in “Ten Keys,” which initially appears to center on two men in a bar waiting for an assassin. His dialogue, too, has the grit and punch of top-shelf crime fiction, though it’s easy to spot that many of Child’s characters sound alike when reading the stories back-to-back. These stories prove that Child has more to offer than the head-splitting exploits of his most popular action hero. Agent: Rebekah Finch, Darley Anderson Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"The stories are quirky, entertaining, and often frankly a lot of fun. . . . Not a single Jack Reacher story or doppelganger in here, that’s true—and yet maybe this is the collection of stories that Reacher might carry with him next time he sticks out a thumb."

NY Journal of Books

"Stories about cops, hired killers, FBI agents, good people, and very bad people, written in Child’s usual unadorned, minimalist prose style . . . Child’s many fans won’t think twice before picking this one up, but the book might also serve to introduce, to people who prefer short fiction, this deservedly popular novelist."

Booklist

"For three decades, year in and year out, Lee Child has been the best thriller writer in the world. No question."

Michael Connelly

"It's Lee Child. Why would you not read it?"

Karin Slaughter

"It's nice to see [Child] spread his wings by stepping inside these many different characters and working his literary magic."

BookReporter