HUNK OF JUNK 2

This time it's not an outside power-tool, it's the new Lee Child novel The Midnight Line which I've just read.

Mind you though, Jack Reacher, Child's action hero in all his novels could be described as an outdoor power-tool. He's big, menacing and is better suited to the outdoors.

I read this book on-line via the Overdrive app we have on our iPhones and iPads. This is a brilliant service and we've accessed hundreds of written and audiobooks totally free (which Robert should investigate - I've mentioned this before).

This is the 'latest' Lee Child novel in the 'Jack Reacher' series and was released (as always) just before Christmas last year.
The 'Jack Reacher' novels are a good 'brain-dead' read (Richard loves them) and have always had enough interesting geographical, political, military and American social information in them to make them worth a read around all the gung-ho action-hero violence.

This one though suggests to me that Lee Child is getting a bit tired of it all as his hero ages (my reckoning chronologically is that Jack Reacher in the latest novel is in his late '50s). Child rushes through the narrative at the beginning and at the end also seems in a hurry to get it all done. It's disappointing and something that I've noticed with other writers like Michael Connolly.

Child hardly bothers to get his facts straight in this novel and, in the fight scenes, goes beyond reality (Reacher knocks down nearly a dozen Hell's Angel-type bikers in the opening chapter). In the mid and later sections of the book Reacher and his entourage shack up in abandoned houses in the wild hills of upper Mid-West USA. These houses have been empty for years but still seem to have electricity and running water.

Disappointing really (sorry Richard).