61 Hours: (Jack Reacher 14)

HOUR SIXTY-ONE

Icy winter in South Dakota. A bus skids and crashes in a gathering storm. On the back seat: Jack Reacher, hitching a ride to nowhere. A life without baggage has many advantages. And disadvantages too, like facing the arctic cold without a coat.

HOUR THIRTY-ONE

A small town is threatened by sinister forces. One brave woman is standing up for justice.If she's going to live to testify, she'll need help from a man like Reacher.Because there's a killercoming for her.

HOUR ZERO

Has Reacher finally met his match? He doesn't want to put the world to rights. He just doesn't like people who put it to wrongs.

Waterstones have been following the nail-biting exploits of Jack Reacher since he first loped into town in Killing Floor in 1997, a striking figure standing at 6ft5 all dirty-blond hair, with a chip on his shoulder and a lethal ability. His creator Lee Child lays claim to the fact that every second somewhere in the world somebody buys one of his novels.

He starts every new novel on the same date, the 1st September and has managed to keep fans coming back for more every time, he says of thriller-writing ‘It's the only real genre and all the other stuff has grown on the side of it like barnacles’.