Last year though the latest offering left a lot to be desired. I didn't read it at Christmas for a change but read it for free in May via Overdrive where library books can be downloaded to an iPad. I didn't like it as I said in my review:
The latest novel, Past Tense which The Old Girl bought me for Christmas is no better.
In it the Reacher character is a cliche and just goes through the motions. There is no extra characterisation as if Lee Child just thinks that he's written all that in the past and can't be bothered anymore.
The other characters are two dimensional and the bad guys are kind of like cardboard cut-outs of the bad guys in the earlier books.
Reacher busts faces, arms and legs of the obligatory big young hired toughs (what has Lee Child - aka James Grant - got against 20-something ex football athletes who are six foot three and 240 plus pounds? Was he beaten up by one once?), stumbles upon a bizarre murder plot and unbelievably solves an old family puzzle.
The by-line on the front of the book say's "We all need Jack Reacher, a righteous avenger for our troubled times". Well, I've got news for the publishers - we don't.
The book boasts an exclusive bonus story Jack Reacher Does Down Under 'an exclusive short story written specially for Australia and New Zealand' which is twenty pages of homicidal rubbish about Reacher travelling to Sydney for 6 hours to murder two people. Absolute twaddle and one suspects that the exact same story with just location details changed is added as 'an exclusive' to readers in various other parts of the world as well.
Sorry Mr Grant but you can do better.
* With apologies to Richard (of RBB) who is an avid Jack Reacher novels fan.
9 comments:
I haven't read it yet, but didn't enjoy ther last one.
2019 has been a good year for The Curmudgeon Ink posts so far. None.
The one where Jack had to bust the "Suicide" circle I remember having a good twist.
It must be hard as an author coming up with ever more unexpected and shocking twists.
Maybe Jack could beat up all the doctors in an abortion clinic next?
Or break into the Vatican and beat up all those child molesting priests?
Yes that would be interesting to see Jack up against two hundred Swiss guards.
I think that old Jack is showing his age.
It's of note in the latest novel that he doesn't change his clothes. He usually buys cheap new ones and trashes the others including, in more recent books, underpants. This time he doesn't bother. He doesn't seem to have his collapsible toothbrush with him. think that his personal hygiene is slipping which might explain why, in this novel he doesn't get some attractive woman into bed with him.
You should write out the entire plot.
Yes I know. I'm pissing Lynn off by recounting some of the plot while she's reading the book.
She also noticed that he hasn't changed his clothes.
Is he still travelling from the north east to the south west?
His pension as a Military Policeman must be running low so hence the same clothes.
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