Killing Floor

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Starting off reading a new series: the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. This one came out in 1997; number 13 is due out in April. So it's a franchise.

Jack is an ex-military policeman, tired of bouncing around the world from one army base to the next. So he's drifting aimlessly through America, taking in the sights he's heard about throughout his life. One day he winds up in sleepy Margrave, Georgia, a town notable for its impeccably-maintained parks, homes, and businesses; he's heard a rumor that an old blues singer, "Blind Blake" had roots there. But Jack's only there briefly before he gets arrested for a shocking, brutal homicide. The rest of the book concerns his efforts to clear his name and bring the real killers to justice.

It's kind of a contradiction: a page turner with a lot of pages: more than 400 in the edition I read, medium-size type, and narrow margins. It's first-person narration, and Reacher keeps up a running inner monologue that makes Travis McGee, the original one-man bull session, look like Calvin Coolidge. (Sometimes repetitive. On page 381, Reacher observes, "Shotguns and children don't mix." A decent bit of tough-guy observation. He thinks it's swell enough so that, nine pages later, he trots it out again: "Children and shotguns don't mix." We got it the first time, Jack.)

Reacher is schooled in the lethal arts, wise to the ways of bad guys, and is not reluctant to blow them away unmercifully. As he unravels the mystery behind the killing, there's lots and lots of imaginative mayhem committed by both good guys and bad. The body count is high, and property damage is immense.

The plot also hinges on a massive unexplained coincidence, which I won't spoil, but I couldn't swallow.


Last Modified 2024-01-31 5:34 AM EDT