PERSUADER

By Lee Child

Delacorte. 342 pp. $24.95

When my novel "The President's Mistress" was published in 1976, this newspaper's reviewer declared that she had started it at breakfast, taken a bus to work instead of a cab so she'd have more time to read, and upon arrival barricaded herself in her office until she finished it. The novel was, she proclaimed, "a Mount Everest among cliffhangers." I was feeling pretty good until she sucker-punched me with her final sentence: "After all, I've always liked Chinese food." In other words, although my little thriller had provided her with a few hours of guilty pleasure, it lacked the stick-to-your-ribs sustenance of "serious" fiction. I was guilty as charged, of course, but somewhat consoled by a movie deal and six-figure paperback sale.