Running Blind (Jack Reacher, No. 4)

Love the series - despite its faults and flaws
OK, so Lee Child isn't exactly Tolstoy or Dickens, and his hero is a misanthropic thug, but who hasn't daydreamed about being a non-person, wandering about using wits, wiles, and fists to right injustices and settle scores? And that's Jack Reacher who does not try to subvert or trick the system with false IDs and such. He takes the bus, pays cash, buys new clothing when the old stuff wears out. No family, no friends, no entanglements, no regrets - a strong, self-reliant character who floats on the surface, diving deeper only when he feels an injustice has been done. The premise is strained, no doubt, but the writing is just good enough to make it readable. I find it a guilty pleasure and enjoy watching Reacher get himself into and out of difficult circumstances, trying to make things right. So, yep, most of the one- and two-star reviewers are correct, but then they probably think James Bond is not entertaining. If you don't much care for Bond, Reacher won't please you much either, for Reacher is the crude American cousin to Bond. Who says sociopaths aren't entertaining?

Disappointing effort by a good writer
This is the fourth or fifth "Jack Reacher novel I have read and I enjoyed the others far more. I can't help thinking that this was actually Lee Child's first Jack Reacher novel that he hadn't been able to get published earlier, because there is a much more unpolished style to the writing and plotting. More glaringly, Reacher himself seems less mature as a person and we are to believe that he really would go weeks without a change of clothes or a shave, with no one complaining about the smell, and beautiful women still drawn to him.

If this wasn't sophomoric and jarring enough, somehow Reacher has forgotten that all he has to do to get his FBI blackmail problem to go away is to call the head of the FBI and tell him about it. If this is really book four in the last couple of years in "Die Trying" Reacher has bailed out the FBI by rescuing a high level FBI agent and saving the FBI from a huge embarrassing scandal. We are somehow to believe that he doesn't remember this.

In "Die Trying", FBI agents are appropriately quite bright and only realistically misled from within. In this book we are to believe that even in a high end Serial Killer task force unit, they are inflexible and totally unable to even consider a new idea from a man they blackmailed into helping them. This is as ridiculous as the murder method is impossible.

You can see in this book the seeds of an excellent writer and if you let yourself go can be carried along for quite awhile (and I can forgive phony red herrings like the office in the Pentagon scene), but this is neither the quality of character or of plotting I have come to expect from Lee Child. This is a first novel kind of effort, not the polished output of a "Best Seller" quality writer.

If this is your first Reacher book skip this one completely and start with "Killing floor". If not, jump to book five and let this one gather dust on the shelves as Lee Child's worst and probably first effort.

Perhaps the dumbest "mystery" I've ever read.
About 1/3 of the way into this book it's painfully obvious who the killer is. It couldn't be that obvious right? It had to be a red herring right? Well, it wasn't. I finished the book simply so that I could see if I'd been right. Throughout the whole book obvious red flags should have... WOULD have caught the attention of any characters with enough brain power to scramble eggs. It's as if Jack Reacher's IQ is the only one high enough to add two and two together. This is a DUMB book.

Whiffy detective (for want of a better term) in pursuit of preposterous killer
I strongly suggest that anyone who contemplates buying this book on the basis of the strong overall rating go immediately to the one-star ratings for a dose of reality--and nevermnd the fact that they contain spoilers.

Those slashing reviews point out many of the outrageous faults of this book. I shall therefore limit myself to just two areas.

Jack Reacher is a totally immature, highly disfunctional, neurotic thug who, for some wholly elusive reason, seems to be irresistibly attractive to most women. The fact that he owns just one set of clothes which he NEVER changes over the whole course of the book and for heaven knows how long before the book starts and after it closes strikes me as making that attractiveness more than slightly improbable--but, hey, maybe some women like a man whom they can smell before they can see.

The killer's identity is painfully obvious about half-way through the book, not from any logical analysis--for their is no logic here--but from the endlessly unnecessary prominence given to the character, that character's relationships and that character's motives. If that is not bad enough, the killer's overall plan is an ancient wheeze that was executed with infinitely more skill by Agatha Christie in "The ABC Murders." Finally, worst, is the actual method of killing, for which I have just one word: ridiculous!

There is only one way in which to enjoy this sort of book: turn off all your higher brain functions and simply enjoy the rush. If you are of a disposition to do that, then this is a three-star book, otherwise it fully deserves its one-star (or lower) status.

LEC/Am/1-10

FOURTH REACHER NOVEL
I am a fan of the Reacher series and this is the fourth book in the series and the fourth I have read. And I will keep going with the series, but I might not have gone on if this one was number one. It is far below the quality of the others. Jack Reacher is a loner but in this one it is too extreme. Hope for better in number five.