'Jack Reacher?' she said.

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This Elvis Cole novel was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, Shamus, and Macavity awards and won both the Anthony and Macavity for Best Novel of the Year. But it is Cole’s partner, ex-Marine and ex-LAPD officer Joe Pike, who most resembles Child’s character Jack Reacher. Plum Island by Nelson DeMille First in the John Corey series. Claire van der Boom - Jack Reacher movie premiere at Event Cinemas Bondi Junction, Sydney, Australia.

He double-checked his memory, because he didn't want to be wrong, although he didn't think he was. Short fair hair, great eyes looking right at him, some kind of a quiet confidence in the way she held herself. She had qualities he would remember. He was sure of that. But he didn't remember them. Therefore he had never seen her before.

'You knew my brother,' he said.

She looked surprised, and a little gratified. And temporarily lost for words.

'I could tell,' he said. 'People look at me like that, they're thinking about how we look a lot alike, but also a lot different.'

She said nothing.

'Been nice meeting you,' he said, and moved away.

'Wait,' she called.

He turned back.

'Can we talk?' she said. 'I've been looking for you.'

He nodded. 'We could talk in the car. I'm freezing my ass off out here.'

She was still for a second longer, with her eyes locked on his face. Then she moved suddenly and opened the passenger door.

'Please,' she said. He climbed in and she walked around the hood and climbed in on her side. Started the engine to run the heater, but didn't go anywhere.

'I knew your brother very well,' she said. 'We dated, Joe and I. More than dated, really. We were pretty serious for a time. Before he died.'

Reacher said nothing. The woman flushed.

'Well, obviously before he died,' she said. 'Stupid thing to say.'

She went quiet.

'When?' Reacher asked.

'We were together two years. We broke up a year before it happened.'

Reacher nodded.

'I'm M. E. Froelich,' she said.

She left an unspoken question hanging in the air: did he ever mention me? Reacher nodded again, trying to make it like the name meant something. But it didn't. Never heard of you, he thought. But maybe I wish I had.

'Emmy?' he said. 'Like the television thing?'

'M. E.,' she said. 'I go by my initials.'

'What are they for?'

'I won't tell you that.'

He paused a beat. 'What did Joe call you?'

'He called me Froelich,' she said.

He nodded. 'Yes, he would.'

'I still miss him,' she said.

'Me too, I guess,' Reacher said. 'So is this about Joe, or is it about something else?'

She was still again, for another beat. Then she shook herself, a tiny subliminal quiver, and came back all business.

'Both,' she said. 'Well, mainly something else, really.'

'Want to tell me what?'

'I want to hire you for something,' she said. 'On a kind of posthumous recommendation from Joe. Because of what he used to say about you. He talked about you, time to time.'

Reacher nodded. 'Hire me for what?'

Froelich paused again and came up with a tentative smile.

'I've rehearsed this line,' she said. 'Couple of times.'

'So let me hear it.'

'I want to hire you to assassinate the Vice President of the United States.'

Chapter 2

'Good line,' Reacher said. 'Interesting proposition.'

'What's your answer?' Froelich asked.

'No,' he said. 'Right now I think that's probably the safest all-around response.'

She smiled the tentative smile again and picked up her purse.

'Let me show you some ID,' she said.

He shook his head.

'Don't need it,' he said. 'You're United States Secret Service.'

She looked at him. 'You're pretty quick.'

'It's pretty clear,' he said.

'Is it?'

He nodded. Touched his right elbow. It was bruised.

'Joe worked for them,' he said. 'And knowing the way he was, he probably worked pretty hard, and he was a little shy, so anybody he dated was probably in the office, otherwise he would never have met them. Plus, who else except the government keeps two-year-old Suburbans this shiny? And parks next to hydrants? And who else but the Secret Service could track me this efficiently through my banking arrangements?'

'You're pretty quick,' she said again.

'Thank you,' he said back. 'But Joe didn't have anything to do with Vice Presidents. He was in Financial Crimes, not the White House protection detail.'

She nodded. 'We all start out in Financial Crimes. We pay our dues as anticounterfeiting grunts. And he ran anticounterfeiting. And you're right, we met in the office. But he wouldn't date me then. He said it wasn't appropriate. But I was planning on transferring across to the protection detail as soon as I could anyway, and as soon as I did, we started going out.'

Then she went a little quiet again. Looked down at her purse.

'And?' Reacher said.

She looked up. 'Something he said one night. I was kind of keen and ambitious back then, you know, starting a new job and all, and I was always trying to figure out if we were doing the best we could, and Joe and I were goofing around, and he said the only real way for us to test ourselves would be to hire some outsider to try to get to the target. To see if it was possible, you know. A security audit, he called it. I asked him, like who? And he said, my little brother would be the one. If anybody could do it, he could. He made you sound pretty scary.'

Reacher smiled. 'That sounds like Joe. A typical harebrained scheme.'

'You think?'

'For a smart guy, Joe could be very dumb sometimes.'

'Why is it dumb?'

'Because if you hire some outsider, all you need to do is watch for him coming. Makes it way too easy.'

'No, his idea was the person would come in anonymously and unannounced. Like now, absolutely nobody knows about you except me.'

Reacher nodded. 'OK, maybe he wasn't so dumb.'

'He felt it was the only way. You know, however hard we work, we're always thinking inside the box. He felt we should be prepared to test ourselves against some random challenge from the outside.'

'And he nominated me?'

'He said you'd be ideal.'

'So why wait so long to try it? Whenever this conversation was, it had to be at least six years ago. Didn't take you six years to find me.'

'It was eight years ago,' Froelich said. 'Right at the start of our relationship, just after I got the transfer. And it only took me one day to find you.'

'So you're pretty quick, too,' Reacher said. 'But why wait eight years?'

'Because now I'm in charge. I was promoted head of the Vice President's detail four months ago. And I'm still keen and ambitious, and I still want to know that we're doing it right. So I decided to follow Joe's advice, now that it's my call. I decided to try a security audit. And you were recommended, so to speak. All those years ago, by somebody I trusted very much. So I'm here to ask you if you'll do it.'

'You want to get a cup of coffee?'

She looked surprised, like coffee wasn't on the agenda.

'This is urgent business,' she said.

'Nothing's too urgent for coffee,' he said. 'That's been my experience. Drive me back to my motel and I'll take you to the downstairs lounge. Coffee's OK, and it's a very dark room. Just right for a conversation like this.'

The government Suburban had a DVD-based navigation system built into the dash, and Reacher watched her fire it up and pick the motel's street address off a long list of potential Atlantic City destinations.

'I could have told you where it is,' he said.

'I'm used to this thing,' she said. 'It talks to me.'

'I wasn't going to use hand signals,' he said.

She smiled again and pulled out into the traffic. There wasn't much. Evening gloom was falling. The wind was still blowing. The casinos might do OK, but the boardwalk and the piers and the beaches weren't going to see much business for the next six months. He sat still next to her in the warmth from the heater and thought about her with his dead brother for a moment. Then he just watched her drive. She was pretty good at it. She parked outside the motel door and he led her inside and down a half-flight of stairs to the lounge. It smelled stale and sticky, but it was warm and there was a flask of coffee on the machine behind the bar. He pointed at it, and then at himself and Froelich, and the barman got busy. Then he walked to a corner booth and slid in across the vinyl with his back to the wall and the whole room in sight. Old habits. Froelich clearly had the same habits because she did the same thing, so they ended up close together and side by side. Their shoulders were almost touching.

'You're very similar to him,' she said.

'In some ways,' he said. 'Not in others. Like, I'm still alive.'

'You weren't at his funeral.'

'It came at an inopportune time.'

'You sound just the same.'

'Brothers often do.'

The barman brought the coffee, on a beer-stained cork tray. Two cups, black, little plastic pots of fake milk, little paper packets of sugar. Two cheap little spoons, pressed out of stainless steel.

'People liked him,' Froelich said.

'He was OK, I guess.'

'Is that all?'

'That's a compliment, one brother to another.'

He lifted his cup and tipped the milk and the sugar and the spoon off his saucer.

Publication Order of Wars of the Roses Books

War of the Roses Series

The British author Conn Iggulden is largely known for his historical fiction, along with his fiction and fantasy novels as well. Writing with a high degree of accuracy, he brings a high level of authenticity to his stories, researching his subjects well, bringing the past to life. This has seen him amass an audience from all across the world, with readers from far and wide discovering his work every day. With a background in English too, he has a handling of the craft quite unlike any other, knowing and understanding exactly what it is that his readers are looking for. Transporting them back to the past, he brings history to life, giving his readers a sense of what it was really like to live back then. It is also his characters that resonate too, as, whilst they may come from eras long in the past, he really manages to make them resonate with a modern audience. This is due to him being able to get deep into the mindsets, providing them with a sense of grounding quite unlike any other, making sure that they stay in the reader’s mind long after they’ve put the book down. Mainly focusing on periods in history, he brings a level of detail to certain periods that give the eras a firm sense of grounding. Over time time this has also lead to him gaining film adaptations of his work, with his ‘Emperor’ series being optioned for the big-screen.

Creating a number of series, he’s really managed to establish himself as an author of epic sagas, providing a level of scope and scale that really is something to be admired. Included in this is his ‘War of the Roses’ series of novels, which is an epic collection of books that focus on this period in the medieval history of England. Dealing with it on a purely factual basis, he takes a look at the politics and the balances of power that were happening at this precise moment in time. Providing the reader with a birds eye view in a sense, he takes them on a journey, giving them a clear idea of what it was actually like then. Taking place between 1437 to 1470, this incorporates a period of extreme turmoil within the monarchy, as England remains divided in shift of power imbalances. Featuring tales of heroism and treachery, this runs through a whole range of different human emotions and grand arcs, as this is one series that really has it all.

So far amassing a total of four novels, it has pretty much captured the entirety of the War of the Roses itself from beginning to end. Starting out with the novel ‘Stormbird’ in 2013, the follow-ups would be released in quick succession of one another, with them all making up the series as a whole. The second book, ‘Trinity’, would be published the following year in 2014, with ‘Bloodline’ coming out in 2015, and ‘Ravenspur: Rise of the Tudors’ arriving in 2016. Spanning across the generations, this is definitely a series for a variety of different ages, as it makes history accessible and easily digestible.

Stormbird

Initially brought out in 2013 on the 10th of October, this was first released through the ‘Michael Joseph’ publishing outlet. Marking the first entry in the ‘War of the Roses’ series of novels, it goes about providing the reader with a clear idea of what’s to come in the following books. It also manages to introduce a lot of the characters for the first time too, whilst also providing a lot of factual information about the period too.

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Setting up the series, this uses history as the basis for its story, as a great amount of research has obviously gone into the work. Establishing the location, it also goes some way towards building upon the atmosphere and the general ambiance of the world overall. It also works at putting all the principal characters into place too, like pieces on a chess-board, setting the tone for the novels to follow.

Taking place in 1437, this sees Henry VI acceding to the throne, with King Henry V having been dead for a long time now. With a frail stature and equally frail mind, he must enlist the help of the Duke of Suffolk, William de la Pole, and the Spymaster Derry Brewer to assist in his running of the kingdom. Believing England needs to be run by a strong king, the Duke of York Plantagenet Richard feels that it’s time for a new leader if England is to survive the oncoming threat from France. Will they gain power and oust King Henry V? Can England survive this period of turmoil and upheaval? What will they all do in the face of the Stormbird?

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Trinity

Jack Reacher Character Description

First released through the ‘Michael Joseph’ publishing house, this was originally published on the 16th of June in 2014. Continuing on from where the last book left off, this is the second in the ongoing ‘War of the Roses’ series of novels. It would directly follow on chronologically, showing what happened next in this essential period of English history.

It is 1454 now and King Henry VI has been struck down with an illness for over a year, having been completely exiled to Windsor Castle. His wife, Queen Margaret of Anjou, is extremely loyal to him, as she safeguards him and his interests, along with caring for their son Edward. Meanwhile Richard Duke of York is looking to build a trinity in opposition to the king, seeking partnership with the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick. That’s when the king comes back to his senses, once again throwing the country into turmoil, as he seeks to retake his throne, and a brutal struggle for power is underway. Will he be able to take his rightful place as the ruler of England? Who will emerge victorious from this fight for power? What will become of Henry as he faces the Trinity?

The War of the Roses Series

As a historical series this really is one of the better ones, as it makes the most of the genre, whilst bringing in a new and unique perspective on the period. Having clearly done his research, Iggulden writes with a strong sense of confidence, a trait which definitely shines through on the page. Whether the audience know about it or not, it is open to everyone, as there is something for both experts and newcomers alike. The interplay between the characters is also well observed too, with the fine nuances and of their interactions working subtly against each others. Setting the standard for a lot of historical literature of this kind, this really sets a new benchmark in the genre, as it’s a series that will stand the test of time for many years to come.