Author Lee Child writes the perennially popular Jack Reacher books. His loyal fans -- often known as "Reacher Creatures" -- gobble them up year after year. I've been hooked from the get go and still count Killing Floor as one of the best thrillers ever. If I ever get my act together and make a Top 10 list of favorite thriller books, it would be on it for sure.
Jack Reacher is the archetype hero. I once saw Lee Child speak at a mystery writers workshop and he said just that -- he wrote Reacher as the hero archetype, like Beowulf or Sir Gawain. He's the outsider who rides into town to save it from the monster. He is big and strong and smart and he drifts around solving unsolvable problems. He can calculate the trajectory of a bullet. He can kill a man with his thumb. He can live on coffee and a catnap. He is cool.I have read all of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books through Make Me. But I found that one so disturbing that I stopped. The books seemed to me to be getting darker and more violent and that one was pretty awful for me. I have the others on my TBR shelf, but they aren't calling to me. I'll get to them, but not soon. I'm not as enthusiastic as I was about the series.
Are any of you Reacher fans? How do you think the series is holding up? Have you stuck with it from the beginning and will you keep going? Please share these or other thoughts in a comment. If you have Lee Child or Jack Reacher posts, please leave a link in your comment.
The Lee Child Jack Reacher books in publication order are:
The Lee Child Jack Reacher books in publication order are:
Worth Dying For (my short review here)
I admit to finding even Killing Floor so disturbing I couldn't continue with the series. I'm a bit frightened to hear that there are worse ones... ;-)
ReplyDeleteYou are right, Killing Floor was violent. But it wasn't creepy violent, like serial killers or sex crimes. So I could handle it. And I thought the mystery was clever. The last one I read gave me nightmares.
DeleteI like the Lee Child books that I have read (books 1-3 and two later books), but the 3rd one, Tripwire, I did find very disturbing. I plan to continue reading them.
ReplyDeleteI have the recent ones on my TBR shelf and will try them. But I have a lower and lower tolerance for creepy, so may have to give up on the series if they continue like Make Me.
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