I noticed he’d released another in the series (#20–“Make Me”) so I rushed out to get it and finished it in one night (I’m too old to be staying up this late). The problem is–his books are so bad! The writing is fine, but the plots… Ugh, the plots.
Nothing I’m about to say should be any kind of spoiler if you’ve ever read a Jack Reacher book: Jack wanders into a rural town. A town with a dark secret. He gets caught up in the proceedings, and ultimately kills all the bad guys. You probably already know what that spoiler says.
These things are so bad. I need a shower. And Lee Child had better hurry the hell up and write another one (shouldn’t take more than a couple of days). I’ll even take another Tom Cruise movie at this point.
Hi, my name is Evil Economist, and I have a problem.
Holy crap! There are 20 of them now? I read the first two or three just a few years ago but haven’t really felt the urge to go further. Maybe I’ll download a few more for the next research cruise.
I read the first book, having heard that they were good. It didn’t do anything for me.
I read a second book, somewhere mid-series, figuring that maybe the first book just wasn’t as good as the later ones. Also didn’t do anything for me.
Personally, I’d suggest Andrew Vachss’ books. Better writing, the bad guys who get murdered deserve it more, and the mysteries are cleverer. And, they do go a bit too samey over time, so you can easily quit and still feel satisfied several decades after.
I read the first book. Wasn’t that good, but it was quick and easy, and I figured the writer was learning. I read the second book. It was nothing more than the first book with different names. Hell, he might have done a find & replace on the names, for all I know.
I have the third and fourth books (all ebooks). I’ve never been tempted to read it. In another Reacher thread, someone likened his books to potato chips; i.e. once you start, you can’t stop. I replied the books were more like Pringles. Once you start, you need a real potato chip to get the taste out of your mouth.
Child’s descriptions of MPs didn’t help. Better trained than Special Forces because they’re the cops to take them down when they go bad? Has he ever actually been in the same postal code as a MP?
I quit cold-turkey and so can you. After the first two or three, the repetitiveness and the superhuman nonsense just got really old. If you want books that are well written, fast paced and entertaining, try the Longmire series by Craig Johnson.
Child has said he doesn’t plot out his books in advance, and it shows, especially after twenty books. It’s always just Jack Reacher, Smelliest Man in America, Wandering Around Acting Like He Knows What He’s Doing Until It’s Time to Wrap Up the Book.
In one of the novels, Reacher sits in a diner musing about how his tough guy look prevents others from approaching him. I laughed out loud because even though he carries a toothbrush and buys new clothes every few days, Jack Reacher doesn’t use deodorant. Smelliest man in America indeed! (Also, beautiful women don’t mind that he reeks and lives like a hobo.)
But yeah, I’ve read them all and I’ll read the new one.
The Spenser books were equally formulaic and predictable, but that worked out just fine for Robert Parker.
I probably should have stopped after the one where Reacher calculates that his chest muscles and rib cage are thick enough to stop a bullet (from a rubbish gun, admittedly) at close range.
Seriously, thank you. My man friend is a big fan of Reacher, I read one and said “Gee, this is almost just like a Travis McGee novel, but not as interesting and with unlikeable characters.” Needless to say, I stuck with Trav (as dated and formulaic as he is) because he’s just a nicer, smarter guy.
The problem is that, individually, each Jack Reacher novel is an excellent and compelling page turner about a badass who stumbles into some criminal conspiracy and wrecks havoc among the bad guys.
Of course, at around the third novel you begin to wonder how come Jack never thinks something like: “Funny how the same things keep on happening to me over and over” or “Um. This situation I’m in is powerfully similar to what happened to me just two books ago.”
But if you treat each book as an alternate reality separated from the others, you can enjoy them.
