“Eleven Numbers” by Lee Child

Dr. Nathan Tyler is a mathematics professor who’s planning to attend a mathematics conference in Moscow. The State Department is warning Americans against traveling to Russia, but Tyler is still planning to go. And then a few days before he is to leave, he’s contacted and told (strongly asked) to meet first with a group. He’s met, driven, flown, and driven to a meeting at Ft. Meade, and he’s asked to undertake an assignment for the White House. 

Tyler is to introduce himself to a Russian mathematician who’s one of the leading practitioners in the world. He’s shown what’s wanted – the key to a complex series of numbers that will allow the United States to disable the entire nuclear weapon capability of Russia.

 

He agrees to undertake the assignment and several days later he lands in Moscow. Driving his rental car to the hotel, almost out of nowhere comes a police car with sirens screaming, t-boning Tyler’s car, knocking over a lamppost, and inuring the policeman driving the car. Not to mention the damage to both automobiles. He’s charged, the U.S. Embassy legal attaché advises him to plead guilty, and even though sentenced to some unknown number of years, the U.S, government will trade him for a prisoner the Russians want. At least, that’s the hope.

 

Tyler will soon learn that nothing is what it seems, and he might be able to trust anyone, including his U.S. friends.

 

Lee Child

Eleven Numbers is a short story by bestselling thriller writer Lee Child, and it’s a tale with so many twists and turns that the reader eventually stops trying to guess the outcome and just goes along for the ride. And it’s a riveting ride.

 

Lee Child, the pen name for James Dover Grant CBE, is a British thriller writer best known for his Jack Reacher movies (made into movies with Tom Cruise and a television series with Alan Richardson). He attended law school, did art-time work in theater, and then joined Granada Television for 18 years. His company made such series as Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. Fired after a corporate restructuring in 1995, he bought $6 worth of paper and sat down to write, drafting Killing Floor, the first of the Jack Reacher novels. And the rest, as they say, is thriller history.

 

I’ve watched the Jack Reacher television series with Alan Richardson, and if you find violence, gratuitous and otherwise, enjoyable, it may be the series (two seasons) for you. The series is two engrossing stories, but I found myself flinching repeatedly during each episode.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Murders for February – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

Turner’s genius for technology – Andrew Wilton at Engelsberg Ideas.

 

Trump’s New Deal: 100 days to reverse the legacy of FDR – Niall Ferguson at The Times of London.

 

How MAGA Won the ‘Sensitive Young Man’ – Mana Afsari at The Free Press.

 

What We Know and What We Don’t Know about January 6 – John Daniel Davidson at Hillsdale College / Imprimis.