The ‘surprise’ factor when reading the thrillers of Lee Child has, it must be admitted, vanished. Most readers who pick up the new book, The Hard Way, will be well aware that this extremely American narrative is, in fact, written by an Englishman. The days when early readers of Child (notably his American fans) would exclaim how amazing it was that Child got all the cultural reference points correct are long gone. And, in a way, that's not a bad thing—now we can judge the novels purely on their own terms. And if The Hard Way doesn't initially appear to be quite as impressive as its predecessors, that's not to say that it isn't a supremely assured piece of work.