Yet, after he's killed and it's reported, nobody else from the government even shows up to check it out. A murder victim turns out to be a federal agent who is working on a super-secret case that is so important that it literally threatens the United States. I've read far better action scenes from guys like John Sandford who actually write thrillers that have plots that hang together and don't trot out every action movie cliche in the process. I know this is a really popular series these days, but unless it gets a lot better in later books, I just don't get it. Hot girl gets kidnapped by bad guys at some point. Hero shacks up with hottest girl in town within two days of meeting her. Hero finds a few trustworthy allies, but is betrayed at some point. Stereotypical villains including corrupt businessmen and politicians. Hero is quickly given a personal grudge against the villains. Hero has a cool, manly sounding name: Jack Reacher. This reads like an '80s action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.Ī big tough ex-military guy drifts into a small town and is sucked into uncovering a vast criminal conspiracy through completely unbelievable coincidences. He is tall and slim, despite an appalling diet and a refusal to exercise. Lee spends his spare time reading, listening to music, and watching the Yankees, Aston Villa, or Marseilles soccer. In the US he drives a supercharged Jaguar, which was built in Jaguar's Browns Lane plant, thirty yards from the hospital in which he was born. Lee has three homes-an apartment in Manhattan, a country house in the south of France, and whatever airplane cabin he happens to be in while traveling between the two. The first Jack Reacher movie, based on the novel One Shot and starring Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike, was released in December 2012. Killing Floor was an immediate success and launched the series which has grown in sales and impact with every new installment. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars' worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of 40 as a result of corporate restructuring. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British TV's "golden age." During his tenure his company made Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. (Mar.Lee Child was born October 29th, 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. Two scenes of brutal violence in a nearby prison are rendered with exquisite precision, as is a stalking murder inside the baggage area of the Atlanta airport, and the vast counterfeiting conspiracy that Reacher's brother was probing is wholly credible. Margrave is a wonderful creation, a seemingly picture- perfect community under the care of a mysterious foundation where the streets are always swept and the people who run the tiny local businesses get grants of $1000 a week to stay open. Otherwise, Child writes with a hand as strong and steady as steel. The reader expects the other shoe to drop-for Reacher to be revealed as an undercover agent, or some such but it never does. This combination of events is so unbelievably convenient that it almost overwhelms the book's solid writing. Downsized out of the military, Reacher has cutting-edge investigative and killing skills that come in handy the moment he learns of his brother's murder. Indeed, when he's arrested in a local diner for being a conspicuously mysterious stranger, Reacher tells the detective who interviews him that he dropped off the bus to investigate the death of Blind Blake, a guitar player murdered in Margrave 60 years ago. Reacher doesn't know about his brother's death or suspect his presence in the town. Treasury official, just happens to have been murdered a few hours earlier. Out of sheer restlessness and rootlessness, 36-year-old ex-military policeman Jack Reacher persuades a Greyhound bus driver to make an unscheduled stop in Margrave, the small Georgia town where Reacher's brother, a U.S. Although the tale is built around a coincidence as big as the author's talent, beautifully detailed action scenes and fascinating arcana about currency and counterfeiting enliven this taut and tough-minded first novel by British TV writer Child.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |