Annoying.
I didn't buy this to like it! I bought it to see what best sellers read like. I didn't expect to zip through it in little over a week and actually enjoy it.
Bugger. No, no, no. That wasn't the idea at all.
I was feeling a bit smug at the start as I struggled with the opening. But brave old me persevered and when Jack Reacher finally turned up in the pages of his own book, all six-five, broad expanse of him, dressed like someone out of Miami Vice, I found it a rewarding experience. Although Tom Cruise playing him in the movie??? Let me check Reacher’s description again…
Let’s move on to the writing, which flowed like blood into the drains around the town square where five seemingly innocent people get shot down by a sniper. Lee Child even has his own style quirk, starting some sentences midway through. I like writing quirks. And it's refreshing to find them floating around in the mainstream.
The plot was tight, the writing convincingly American, given the writer hails from my side of the pond. It’s easy to see why the Reacher series is so popular, he’s a likeable outsider, well versed in the stealthy moves needed to evade the various nasties who want to ‘pop a cap in his bottom’ to use watered-down parlance.
Yes, maybe the ending was over a little quickly, but that’s how Reacher likes to operate. Get in, do the business and then get out before any of the ladies he’s impressed try to tie him down.
