I just completed my first book of 2021. Well, technically I started it in 2020 and finished it in 2021. So I’m sure how to categorise that. Certainly not a full read. A half-read?
Anyway, it was A Wanted Man by Lee Child, another book in the Jack Reacher series. I fell in love with the series while pregnant with my first child. The books are easy to get into, not usually demanding and very fast-paced. It suited my frame of mind at the time. I started with Killing Floor and I flew through one after the other. Every year since, I would read several, but then I read a few weak books and decided to leave them alone for a while.
2020, as we all know, was a heavy year and I wanted something to escape into and picked up this Jack Reacher story.
It started off so well. So strong. Three people in a car pick up Jack Reacher, who as usual is killing time by going wherever his heart fancies. This time it’s to Virginia to see a lady he had spoken to once or twice. Don’t ask. It doesn’t need to make sense.
What was enjoyable was the high sucking-in factor of the book (that ability of Lee Child’s to grab the reader from the first page for a whirlwind ride and never let go). There was the car journey, the discovery of a murder in Nebraska, the arrival of the FBI agent and subsequent investigations. Cut-back to Reacher in the car with the two men and lone woman. The tension builds nicely and compellingly.
I hung on for the fast and exciting ride trying to figure out what the big mystery was. But as the pieces started to come together and the conspiracy started to unfold, that there is where I started to lose interest. It made no sense to me at all. I couldn’t make head or tail of what was going on. I kept reading anyway, hoping to better understand the evolving plot.
As I speak, I have finished the book and still don’t get it. I raced through the last third of the book just to be done with it (I’m one of those people who hate to drop a book mid-way).
I slowed down for the escape scene at the end, which was gripping (Lee Child does this so well). And then our hero is free and proceeds to explain to the 2 FBI agents with him the why and who dunnit of the entire plot. I’m glad someone figured things out, because there is no way on God’s good earth that I would have. And then they drop Reacher off at practically the same spot he was picked up at the start of the book, so he can be on his merry way.
All in all, it started out with so much promise and ended-up in quicksand. I was happier to finish reading this book than I was reading most of it.
Which are the best Jack Reacher books you’ve read? I need some recommendations so I don’t end up with another snoozer like this. I want to re-capture that early feeling of sinking into the perfect mystery.
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