Killing Floor (Jack Reacher, No. 1)

Killing Floor (Jack Reacher, No. 1) Review

Killing Floor (Jack Reacher, No. 1) Overview

All is not well in Margrave, Georgia. The sleepy, forgotten town hasn't seen a crime in decades, but within the span of three days it witnesses events that leave everyone stunned. An unidentified man is found beaten and shot to death on a lonely country road. The police chief and his wife are butchered on a quiet Sunday morning. Then a bank executive disappears from his home, leaving his keys on the table and his wife frozen with fear. The easiest suspect is Jack Reacher - an outsider, a man just passing through. But Reacher is not just any drifter. He is a tough ex-military policeman, trained to think fast and act faster. He has lived with and hunted the worst: the hard men of the American military gone bad.

Killing Floor (Jack Reacher, No. 1) Specifications

When Jack Reacher suddenly decides to ask a Greyhound bus driver to let him off near the town of Margrave, Georgia, he thinks it's because his brother once mentioned that the famed blues guitarist Blind Blake died there. But it doesn't take long for the footloose ex-military policeman to discover that there are plenty of strange--and very dangerous--things going on behind Margrave's manicured lawns and clean streets that demand his attention. This first thriller by a former television writer features some of the best-written scenes of action in recent memory, a crash course in currency and counterfeiting, and a hero who is just begging to be called on for an encore.

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Jan 29, 2011 15:20:05

Persuader (Jack Reacher, No. 7)

Persuader (Jack Reacher, No. 7) Review

Child's Jack Reacher is something of a mystery man but one can't help having a certain appreciation for the simplicity of his lifestyle. The bare basics of only a toothbrush makes those of us with way too much, look like fools and thus has a certain pull on me. He is an elequent "Man's Man" and "Ladies" man deeply rooted within espionage.

Persuader (Jack Reacher, No. 7) Overview

Jack Reacher.

The ultimate loner.

An elite ex-military cop who left the service
years ago, he’s moved from place to place...without family ... without possessions... without commitments.

And without fear. Which is good, because trouble -big, violent, complicated trouble - finds Reacher wherever he goes. And when trouble finds him, Reacher does not quit, not once...not ever.

But some unfinished business has now found Reacher. And Reacher is a man who hates
unfinished business.

Ten years ago, a key investigation went sour
and someone got away with murder. Now a chance encounter brings it all back. Now Reacher sees his one last shot. Some would call it vengeance. Some would call it redemption. Reacher would call it...justice.

Persuader (Jack Reacher, No. 7) Specifications

Jack Reacher, the taciturn ex-MP whose adventures in Lee Child's six previous solidly plotted, expertly paced thrillers have won a devoted fan base, returns in this explosive tale of an undercover operation set up by the FBI to rescue an agent investigating Zachary Beck, a reclusive tycoon believed to be a kingpin in the drug trade. The novel begins with a bang as Reacher rescues Beck's son from a staged kidnapping in order to get close to his father--and trace the connection between Beck and Quinn, a former army intelligence officer who tried to sell blueprints of a secret weapon to Iraq but was murdered before he could pull it off. Or so Reacher thinks, until he spots Quinn in the crowd at a concert in Boston. As usual, Child ratchets up the tension and keeps the reader in suspense until the last page, although his enigmatic hero hardly ever seems to break a sweat. In the tough guy tradition, Reacher and his creator are overdue for a breakout, and this muscular, well-written mystery might be the one. --Jane Adams

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Nov 03, 2010 04:23:05

One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9)

One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9) Review

The world is becoming a smarter place. One piece of evidence is thriller/mystery writing, which is sure better than decades ago. Lee Child is part of that trend, but he may be the leader in the race to stay inside the thriller/mystery genre while still finding ways to be more gripping, with top-rate plot twists and deeper characters. One Shot is as good as any of the Reacher novels, but that's very high praise [Nothing to Lose is the only pretty dumb one].

After saying that, I have to begin by listing the problems with Child and the book. There are the usual problems with Child's writing--sections of 'People say nothing. Not a thing. No way....' If a beautiful woman doesn't love his hero Jack Reacher, she's a villain or a jerk. People lock Reacher up, but he miraculously gets freed just when the plot needs him to. Vast conspiracies always end up a few people short; genius baddies kill other people for asinine reasons but don't kill Reacher when they have great reasons and opportunities to do so. Long ago, Mark Twain mocked the Pathfinder for showing his hero killing a fly with a rifle at 100 yards; Reacher can shoot way better than that with a rifle he has never even tried. He notices nits where other people overlook ostrich eggs, and the nits he picks are always the eggs of deadly monsters. To tell the truth, authors don't need to write thrillers that way, and occasional Reacher novels veer from that pattern. Here, it's as if Child feels pressured to take up the universal cliches, maybe to escape the Oprah Winfrey club.

But Child makes it work. Reacher figures things out at the right pace, with time to move each new puzzle-piece around before fitting it in and finding the next one. He even thinks his fights through before they start--and if he throws punch without strategic consideration, it's a reflex based on vast training and experience. So it's the thoughtful readers [I modestly claim] who are most liable to be drawn in by Child's writing. In this book, Reacher starts out with surplus, clinching reasons for believing that the apparent killer is really guilty. Only because of the villains' overly clever ploys does he, surely but very slowly, gets drawn away from his original prejudice. Two or more of the villains are almost as smart as Reacher--they think things through about as well as him despite some mistakes, and the shock of finding the foes to have outthought him brings on Reacher's most amazing work.

I hope nothing in this review is a spoiler for this book. Like always, you the reader know things will turn out not to be what they seem, but the ride to get past the facade and then, chapters past that, on to the truth is amazing.

One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9) Overview

Six shots. Five dead. One heartland city thrown into a state of terror. But within hours the cops have it solved: a slam-dunk case. Except for one thing. The accused man says: You got the wrong guy. Then he says: Get Reacher for me. And sure enough, from the world he lives in - no phone, no address, no commitments - ex–military investigator Jack Reacher is coming. In Lee Child’s astonishing new thriller, Reacher’s arrival will change everything - about a case that isn’t what it seems, about lives tangled in baffling ways, about a killer who missed one shot - and by doing so gives Jack Reacher one shot at the truth....

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Oct 19, 2010 23:44:05