Die Trying (1998) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• Jack Reacher: Former military police officer, thirty-seven years and eight months old, unmarried, currently club doorman in Chicago. Graduated from West Point; considered a hero with a Silver Star, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Soldier's Medal, the Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart; only non-Marine in history to win the Wimbledon Marine Sniper School Cup, a sniper competition held by the United States Marine Corps.
• Holly Johnson: Beautiful and brilliant newly inducted FBI Special Agent. She has an accountancy degree from Yale, and a master's from Harvard, and three years on Wall Street.Injured her leg playing soccer
• McGrath: FBI Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Office.
• Milosevic: FBI agent working with Holly.
• Harland Webster: Director of the FBI.
• Brogan: ambitious FBI section head.
• Peter Wayne Bell: Criminal.
• Beau Borken: Extreme right-wing militia commander; a cruel and selfish leader. brilliantly crazy
• Odell Fowler: (Dell); calls himself the chief of staff of the "new country" in Montana.
• Tony Loder: Fairly bad guy, old friend of Borken's.
• Steven Stewart: Called Stevie, or Little Stevie; jumpy, jittery farm boy. Said to be a couple of bushels short of a wagon load. Mr. Borken's right hand man.
• Jackson: member of the Montana militia.
• Joseph Ray: member of the Montana militia.
• Dexter: White House Chief of Staff.
• General Leon Garber: Jack Reacher's former commanding officer.
• Ruth Rosen: Attorney General

Quotes edit see section history

• “I've got a rule, Holly: people mess with me at their own risk. I try to be patient about it.”

  Jack Reacher

• “I had a teacher once, grade school somewhere. Philippines, I think, because she always wore a big white hat. So it was somewhere hot. I was always twice the size of the other kids, and she used to say to me: count to ten before you get mad, Reacher. And I've counted way past ten on this one. Way past.”

  Jack Reacher

• “Every ask yourself why the UN is so near Wall Street? Because that's the government. The United States and the banks.They run the world. America's just a small part of it.”

  Joseph Ray

• “There are things going on you wouldn't believe. You know it's a secret federal law that all babies born in the hospital get a microchip implanted just under their skin? When they take them away, they're not weighing them and cleaning them up. They're implanting a microchip. Pretty soon the whole population is going to be visible to secret satellites.”

  Joseph Ray

• “It's like they're solving a corpse-disposal problem in advance. Get rid of the middle class now, they don't need so many concentration camps later.”

  Beau Borken

• “I don't know why he's there, but I promise you he's clean, and he's going to do what needs doing, or he's going to die trying.”

  General Garber

• “People, Reacher was certain about. Dogs were different. People had freedom of choice. If a man or a woman ran snarling toward him, they did so because they chose to. They were asking for whatever they got. His response was their problem. But dogs were different. No free will. Easily misled. It raised an ethical problem. Shooting a dog because it had been induced to do something unwise was not the sort of thing Reacher wanted to do.”

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• He had learned a long time ago that some things were worth being afraid of. And some things were not. Things that he had done before and survived did not justify fear. To be afraid of a survivable thing was irrational.

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• abatis is?” Reacher looked blank. He knew what an abatis

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• abatis was. But he wasn’t about to let Fowler know exactly how much he knew about anything. So he just looked blank. “You fell some trees,” Fowler said. “Every fifth

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• Fourth person into the third-floor meeting room was the agent assigned to help Holly out with the fetching and carrying until she recovered from her soccer injury. His name was Milosevic.

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• THE DIRECTOR OF the FBI got out of a budget review meeting just before seven-thirty in the evening. He walked back to his office suite and checked his messages. His name was Harland Webster

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• abatis, Reacher. Use the power of nature against them. They can’t get through those damn trees, that’s for sure. Soviets used it against Hitler, Kursk, World War Two. An old Commie trick. Now we’re turning it around against them.”

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• “Abatises,” the Marine said. “The vehicle is going to stall against them. No doubt about that.

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• “Abatises?” Borken said. “Right.” Then he

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• Tripwire Available in paperback from Jove Books

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• HOLLY JOHNSON HAD a rule. It was a rule bred into her, like a family motto. It had been reinforced by her long training at Quantico. It was a rule distilled from thousands of years of military history and hundreds of years of law enforcement experience. The rule said: hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Chicago
• Montana: near a town called Yorke.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Killing Floor, and followed by Tripwire.

Preceded by Killing Floor, and followed by Tripwire.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Lee Child (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• WH Smith Thumping Good Read Award (2003, Winner)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3553.H4838 D54 1998
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Graphic violence.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Mystery & Thrillers › Thrillers › Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Lee Child: Author's website

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history