Lee Child doesn't like that David Baldacci started a new series with a character named John Puller who shares many similarities with Jack Reacher. Child said he wouldn't have minded if Baldacci were a new author but he is well-established. So Child created unsavory characters named Puller in A Wanted Man and Baldacci as you've noted in Never Go Back.
Here is the book description from B&N for John Puller Book #1 so you can form your own opinion on whether it sounds similar.
Quote:
From David Baldacci the modern master of the thriller and #1 worldwide bestselling novelist-comes a new hero: a lone Army Special Agent taking on the toughest crimes facing the nation.
And Zero Day is where it all begins....
John Puller is a combat veteran and the best military investigator in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division. His father was an Army fighting legend, and his brother is serving a life sentence for treason in a federal military prison. Puller has an indomitable spirit and an unstoppable drive to find the truth.
Now, Puller is called out on a case in a remote, rural area in West Virginia coal country far from any military outpost. Someone has stumbled onto a brutal crime scene, a family slaughtered. The local homicide detective, a headstrong woman with personal demons of her own, joins forces with Puller in the investigation. As Puller digs through deception after deception, he realizes that absolutely nothing he's seen in this small town, and no one in it, are what they seem.
Facing a potential conspiracy that reaches far beyond the hills of West Virginia, he is one man on the hunt for justice against an overwhelming force.
|