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I started the Jack Reacher series somewhere near the end. After being bit by the bug, so to speak, I came back to the start and am proceeding to go through them all. Lee Child has really got a good character going with "Reacher".
Best Child novel in Jack Reacher series. Try this first and you will be hooked on the rest of the series.
Every character in the book constantly ends their sentences with "right."It's one thing if one character has this speech tic but when every character does it, then I blame the editor for simply being lazy. Many reviewers pointed out the flaws in the Reacher books - he's a superhuman, knows everything etc. But I find his novels a nice escape although the writing style can get extremely annoying. And Since Child is a Brit, the editor should have cleaned up the Britbonics that this supposedly US soldier uses like mobile phones.they're cells over here.Complaints aside, it's still a fun ride. Nice to read about someone as smart, tough and dangerous as myself.
This stream of consciousness procdural is beyond tedious. It is painful. I read it because 1) I was stuck 2)I paid for it - but I want my money back (really rather have my time back).
Jack Reacher, late thirties, tall, lean, buzzed cut that said military every which way, is out of a job as a respected and methodical MP with an impeccable record, and is now an honorably discharged civi. I couldn't put it down until I'd finished it. He's fierce, knows more about guns and weapons than is comfortable, but in a tight fix, he's the man you want watching your back. Um--isn't that the point. And so he goes, a stranger to the world that proves even stranger, and into the wide blue yonder. This would make for a great dramatic-thriller movie, despite the slow--but steady--plot. When he decides to remain, despite the false arrest and all the BS he's getting, Jack Reacher has to stay. And so it begins.
It was law. Perfect houses, manicured lawns, little trouble, everyone content. Some of the reviews criticized the caricature of Reacher as following the hero-myth-mold too well and that the character was unrealistically macho being too confident. And it is. Southern hospitality welcomed strangers, wanderers, riffraff, ramblers.
Eno's was local, very local. Had to be. One or two things, like things falling into place a little too easily and smoothly (though Child's is a gifted writer and his writing is compelling and hard to deny) will inevitably nag at you, and any book over 400 pages will do that to anyone. Jack Reacher is a man's man, logical, pragmatic, utterly ruthless when needed, and a man who lives day by day and craves freedom, anonymity. Clean, pristine streets. Or in this case, a happenstance dropoff he insisted to the Grayhound driver so he could hear how Blind Blake, an old guitarist who had passed through Margrave, had ended his days.
Subsidies up the wazoo. Should have been nothing. So when Jack Reacher saw the local PD come at the diner like hell on wheels, well, they were there for him. The classic Great American hero, in that familiar Bond, Die Hard, Indiana Jones and Clancy mold, is given a refreshing and chilling color. No sonnets, but there were some great one liners and interesting introspection that will make you think twice. So Child's structure is terse, to the point and simple. Everyone is not without. But don't let it deter you from reading one of the best mysteries I've read in a long time with a compelling cast of characters, a well researched and plotted story with lots of great scenes and action, and a hero you won't get enough of.
Child's style, did, tend to reduce the emotional element to something more robotic and clinical but that actually works with a mystery thriller like Killing Floor, and a male lead that Child has created. In a small southern town like Margrave, Georgia, everyone knows eachother. The structure created a very tight and intense play of action, especially physical action, which was so well done. In a way, simplicity is sometimes the most elegant and clear-cut, especially when the story plot itself is complicated and dense which helps the reader to focus and stay on the main lead and what he's going through.
But it's hard, as bodies keep floating to the surface, and their secrets, left unheard. He makes no apologies for it and I like that Child was able to commit from beginning to end, the nature of this amazing character. People who know how to make killing look like an art are on his tail, and with a couple of trusty natives to help him find the rest of the clues, Jack is doing all he can to stay one step ahead. Locals, they'd get a quiet reprimand, and eased out slowly, no fuss, no mess. It's not a easy/simple read you'll finish in a day since its so dense with a lot of detail though Child lays it all out fairly well and allows both the reader to piece it together along with Reacher.
Too obvious, too creepy Stepford perfect. Because by another stroke of chance black luck, Margrave has become the killing floor of not only some people who were bad seeds to begin with, but his own brother, Joe Reacher, a genius mastermind in the highly successful anticounterfeiting unit of the Treasury Department, which has eliminated over 90% of all domestic counterfeiting rings. Some people got annoyed by a few quirks like style, structure, tenses, or that Jack's too mach, that he came to the right conclusion all the time and rarely doubted himself, which, to me, were all small issues when you're trying to find something wrong with a book that was mostly hard to put down. While I need a break before I pick up the next one, I will, eventually.
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