I don’t much like Lee Child’s Reacher series, which epitomise treadmill routine writing. This is the 16th Reacher novel and is a prequel. The story has Reacher becoming a loner solving problems using extreme violence. Child appears to have taken notes approvingly from Nazi war criminals for his various graphically written acts of violence. These are interspersed at regular intervals presumably to maintain the interest of his voyeuristic readers. Reacher has a robotic mind which is exemplified by this quotation, “My inner clock said that it was one minute to eleven”. Given that, why did I read The Affair? I read it because it was reviewed in The Literary Saloon*, which reviews books which are the antithesis of a Child novel. Being amazed I read the book.
A review quoted by the Literary Saloon sums a Child novel up-
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OK, so none of this is exactly Dickens or Proust, and having read three Reacher novels so far I’m beginning to see the common threads: Lonely towns. Twisted souls. And, above all, body counts.” – Rosie Mestel, The Los Angeles Times |
My original position remains unchanged. I didn’t much like Child’s novels before reading The Affair and I still don’t.
*For the Literary Review’s review go to http://www.completereview.com/reviews/thriller/childl2.htm#ours
To see the list of Child’s Reacher novels go to https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/lee-child/
Why you should buy this book: It’s a compelling page-turner.
Why you shouldn’t buy this book: It’s sadistic, amoral and robotic.
Chris
Odeboyz's Blog 