Review: Eleven Numbers by Lee Child – A short but thrilling palate cleanser
This packs in a lot of drama for just 30-odd pages.
Eleven Numbers by Lee Child: The key details
- Publish date: 1st February 2025
- Genre: Political thriller
- Publisher: Amazon original stories
- Series/standalone: Standalone
- No. of pages: 36
Blurb: Nathan Tyler is an unassuming professor at a middling American university with a rather obscure specialty in mathematics — in short, a nobody from nowhere. So why is the White House calling? Summoned to Washington, DC, for a top-secret briefing, Nathan discovers that he’s the key to a massive foreign intelligence breakthrough. Reading between the lines of a cryptic series of equations, he could open a door straight into the heart of the Kremlin and change the global balance of power forever. All he has to do is get to a meeting with the renowned Russian mathematician who created it. But when Nathan crashes headlong into a dangerous new game, the odds against him suddenly look a lot steeper.
Eleven Numbers by Lee Child: The review
I’ve been slow to get through many books so far this month, so I’ve been super appreciative of Eleven Numbers, a very short story from Lee Child. When I say short, I mean short: this is around 30 pages, and I was done with it in about half an hour.
I was a little worried as to how Child would possibly be able to fit the plot of an entire thriller into such a short amount of pages, but somehow it works. I think that’s testament to a good writer who knows exactly how to balance pacing. Obviously, there’s not a huge amount of detail here, and you’ll rush from one plot point to another, but there’s just enough information to give you everything you need.
The narrative of Eleven Numbers revolves around a secret Russian code, and the US government’s plot to crack it. The protagonist is Nathan Tyler, a mathematics professor who is central to cracking the code. For such a short read, Child fits in a surprising amount of drama, and the plot was thrilling enough that I would have happily read an expanded version of the story. There’s even a fun little twist hidden in here that I didn’t see coming.
I’ve never read anything by Lee Child before, but now I’ve read Eleven Numbers, I’m certainly more interested in reading a full novel of his. I presume that’s kind of the point of this short story. Still, I’ve very much appreciated this bite-sized read: it’s perfect to get you out of a reading slump and have a miniature thrill injected into your evening.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This review is based on an digital copy of Lee Child provided by Netgalley.
