A convincing Victorian world of eerie moors and fearless detectives, impenetrable ciphers and strange hooded assassins. A pacey, enjoyable yarn, with a surprising twist that ranks with the best of the Doyle Canon

Truly frightening

A satisfying Borgesian mix of library riddle, fact and conjecture

Explodes into one of the best thrillers I've read for ages. Lee Child is a Brit who has managed to becomes more American than most US authors... 61 Hours is destined to do big things... Superb stuff!

This is the first of Lee Child's popular Jack Reacher novels I've read. I'd assumed they were merely the macho adventures of a boneheaded lone wolf: lots of guns and explosions and little to occupy the mind. Well, I was wrong: there's also an abundance of intelligence and surprise. 61 Hours is a first-class thriller... Child delivers it brilliantly

In many ways it's the most climactic Reacher ever... There's a sequel planned for this autumn. Can't wait!

One of the many delights of Child's extraordinary sequence of novels is Reacher's 360-degree intelligence... there are now Lee Child copycats aplenty. Save your money for the real thing

Child spins a great yarn, his descriptive powers are austere yet glorious... He could take out Bond, Dirty Harry, Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt with both hands tied behind his back. And then sleep with their girlfriends two at a time before getting the last bus out of town. All without untying his hands. The Reacher novels are literary beat-'em-ups for the pre-console generation. They are, like the hero, simply irresistible

As always with Child, the hook is smart, the plot possibilities are given a thorough workout, and the tension bites as hard as the South Dakota windchill

A storyteller who knows a lot about style... Watching the clock underscores the tension that Child builds so well. You do and you don't want it all to end

Lee Child certainly knows by now how to screw up the tension with excruciating precision, but here excels himself with a beautifully paced tale that leaves the reader breathless with suspense as the final hours tick away

Craftiest and most highly evolved of Lee Child's electrifying Jack Reacher books... That legend of a tough, cerebral drifter, a latter-day 6-foot-5-inch cowboy... has now taken on a life of its own... The truth about Reacher gets better and better

A Hitchockian escalation of tension... brings to mind another iconic Jack (Bauer, from the TV series 24)... works disturbingly well

The writing's superb, and the plot's gripping and completely believable. A real page-turner

A powerhouse of tension and nail-biting suspense... an excellent and masterful work of fiction

It would be foolish to call 61 Hours the best Reacher adventure yet, since they're all excellent... just that bit more thrilling than some of the others... another gripping, cunningly constructed, compellingly written thriller

A contender for top thriller of 2010

A turbo-charged page-flipper: you're on page 300 before you take a breath...Child is a master of distances, spaces and the physics of opposing forces