Safe Enough: And Other Stories

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.

CONTENTS:

• The Bodyguard
• The Greatest Trick of All
• Ten Keys
• Safe Enough
• Normal in Every Way
• The .50 Solution
• Public Transportation
• Me and Mr. Rafferty
• Section 7 (a) (Operational)
• Addicted to Sweetness
• The Bone-Headed League
• I Heard a Romantic Story
• My First Drug Trial
• Wet with Rain
• The Truth About What Happened
• Pierre, Lucien & Me
• New Blank Document
• Shorty and the Briefcase
• Dying for a Cigarette
• The Snake-Eater by the Numbers

Child gleefully toys with readers’ expectations, mirroring his duplicitous characters as he performs a series of satisfying bait-and-switches. . . . These stories prove that Child has more to offer than the head-splitting exploits of his most popular action hero.”
―Publishers Weekly

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

This is a great summer read . . . you’ll romp through [these stories] in a happy afternoon.”
—The Spectator

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

It’s nice to see [Child] spread his wings by stepping inside these many different characters and working his literary magic.”
—BookReporter

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.

See other titles by Lee Child