Cover comparison: One Shot | 5th September 2011, 21:18

Depicted above are four covers for Lee Child's ninth Jack Reacher novel, One Shot, which sees the hero investigating when a sniper shoots five civilians from a car park. The top right image is the current UK paperback cover, the bottom right the US cover, the bottom left is the original UK cover, and the top left... well, I'm not entirely sure, but I'm assuming it's a new US cover, as it seems dominant as a result in a GIS, although in a variety of shades of orange, and a quick bit of research seems to back this up. I'm going to think about the UK covers first. The newer one (top right) is the cover design that all my copies of Lee Child's books are in, being a fairly recent convert (14 months ago), although the publishers recently decided to change the size which seemed a little bizarre. I thought this was an image of the new larger format novel as there's a vast amount of black space above the title that makes the picture look a little lost, but the word 'NEW' gives away that it isn't. I like the simplicity of the cover. It's a simple picture that seems to depict part of the story, and the text tells you everything you need to know. Prsumably the word 'New' has been removed. The use of a single main colour runs through the set, and in this example it's actually the black, with the golden yellow being a secondary colour. There is however a problem with this cover. You may have noticed my use of the word 'seems' in the above paragraph, and this is because the image does not display a scene from the book. It's true that there is a sequence fairly early on where a van of similar description is parked in a multi-storey car park, however it is described as being full - to the extent that an orange traffic cone has to be placed to reserve a space for the van. Read the book to find out why this is important. The older UK cover (bottom left) is similar and has the same issue with the image. At first glance I thought the pictures were the same, just flipped, but looking at them side-by-side it seems they are just very similar. Clearly neither artist read the book. The text on this edition is much more brash - the title text in a typeface that I would expect on a children's novel, and that used for the author's name just defies belief. I can't imagine what anyone was thinking when they designed this - it just makes it look like the author is a robotic bodybuilder (I am thinking an older robocop). The US edition on the bottom right seems to be the predominant US cover. I've come to expect the line about 'Wow Amazing No 1 Top Super Brilliant Smashing New York Times Bestesteverselling' and I imagine everyone else in the world has become blind to this sort of thing. I quite like the typeface for the title - it's brash and bold without looking silly, although it is a little plain in the solid primary colours. The image on this is actually quite nice, although again it shows a location unlike that described in the actual narrative. It's much grittier and seems more real than the drawings used on the UK covers, however that may not help to sell the book as it perhaps makes it look darker than it actually is. A final point of interest is that this edition labels the book as 'A Reacher novel' rather than 'A Jack Reacher novel' - which I rather approve of as being more true to the nature of the character, who is always referred to by surname alone (even by his mother). I can understand though that to new readers this may be a little off-putting if they don't already understand that Reacher is the character's name. Finally the cover at the top left which actually inspired me to write this. It's so completely different and I think it could well be the best of the bunch. It's simple, but stands out. The bold colouring on a bookshop's shelves is something that other authors I read have done before and are doing now (John Grisham), but in the rather crowded crime fiction section you need to be able to leap out to the reader. My only concern would be that it makes it look trivial and childish. The artwork works well with the title, if not the actual plot, with a single shot through a target (actually thinking about it this could be relevant to the plot, but no spoilers). The bullet hole itself does look a bit corny though. Overall, I have to plump for the top right cover that I've got on my shelf as my favourite, but the orange cover comes in a close second. If the tone of the novel was a little lighter this would probably fit, but it's meant to be serious, and the tone of the UK cover image seems to fit this well.

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