How-to from the man who can do anything

Reacher’s Rules: Life Lessons from Jack Reacher, foreword by Lee Child (Bantam Press, RRP $25):

Here’s the perfect gift for the Jack Reacher fan in your life: a book of life lessons from the man himself.

Reacher, the star of Lee Child’s awesome series of thrillers, is a tough dude who is built like the proverbial brick dunny and in the habit of kicking ass and taking names. And he’s not really all that interested in the names.

The books have been hugely successful and are about to make the transition to the big screen via a movie starring the rather diminutive and clean-cut Tom Cruise as the main character. As much as I love the books, I doubt I’ll be going to see the movie.

However, this little book is a welcome addition to my Reacher collection and gave me plenty of laughs as I thumbed through it.  Many of these “rules” are snippets taken from the many Reacher novels, life lessons and utterances from Reacher on everything from the best way to choke someone (from behind, apparently), to efficient ways to break and enter houses, keeping clean on the road and the science of burning down a building.

There’s a whole chapter on personal grooming and a particulary detailed entry on how to open a locked iron gate with a Chrysler (step 1, open all the windows of the car to lessen the the noise, so that the bang on impact doesn’t deafen you completely).

For some questions, the answer is Google. For any other question worth asking, this book will suffice.

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