Killing Floor (1997)

This was the first Jack Reacher novel I read and I was an instant fan. He's got just the right amount of hero and flawed in his personality. And I love the detailed descriptions of kicking butt. ( )

Killing Floor is the very first installment of Lee Child’s now long-running series featuring former Army military police officer Jack Reacher. The swashbuckling, finger-breaking, MP-turned-vagrant-turned-vigilante Reacher is a little more nuanced and interesting than many of the typical hero-with-a-heart-of-gold-and-a-swift-kick-in-the-face types. But ultimately Killing Floor is all about figuring out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys and seeing what Reacher intends to do about it. It is no spoiler that it will involve a lot of violence, chases and double-crosses. The first two-thirds really had me hooked into the story. However, the last third got a bit cliché and became a little farfetched at the end. Still, it was a solid introduction to a character that has carried the Lee Child franchise for 16+ years now and shows little sign of slowing down. It was a fun read filled with action and I was never bored. I’m looking forward to reading more of the series to see how Reacher’s character develops over time. Killing Floor is a worthy first installment for anyone looking for a wiz-bang action series. ( )

Good fun action chewing gum for the mind. Great pace ( )

KILLING FLOOR reminded me a little bit of Oz. It's a pretty spectacular novel, full of crazy twists and turns. It builds from a small story about a bum passing through a small town in Georgia to a massive, international, big-big-dealio counterfeiting operation in a natural, organic way. It's a BIG book and the dead bodies pile up as Reacher plows his way towards the thrilling conclusion, but Child doesn't lose sight of the building blocks - I cared about the whole cast of characters by the end, a half-dozen people who had all bravely done their parts to foil the bad guys. But, and here's the Oz part, every so often I could see the Wizard lurking around pulling the strings and that spoiled some of the fun.

And by that I mean it got easy to spot where Child was laying out his clues. A nice early example comes when Jack Reacher is tossed in state prison for a few days with this guy, Paul Hubble. There's a big scene where a prison bully stomps into the cell and tries to push Hubble around. One of the first things he does is smash Hubble's glasses. It seems like a random act of violence, just setting up Reacher's moment to step in and save the day, but turns out to be not random at all. After a few more incidents it got really easy to see that something that was (1) showy and memorable and (2) random-seeming was always a Big Clue and never a random incident. It made it easy to follow the very complicated plot but also made it super easy to see the author nudging events into a nice choreography.

There were a few other little things. Like, at one point Reacher takes a trip to New York City just so he can have a conversation with a guy. I don't know why conversations are more interesting in novels when they are face-to-face vs. over the phone, but it's generally true. Still, having a character waste a whole day when time is tight just to add a little drama to a plain old conversation? Lame.

Thing is, I could make a long list of little niggling things that bugged me but a whole world of nitpicking doesn't change the fact that KILLING FLOOR is a very impressive novel. I've been curious about the Jack Reacher series for a while now, and despite all the hype I wasn't disappointed. Reacher is this deceptively plain-spoken anti-hero who grabs hold of your attention and just yanks you along though the novel, holding center stage no matter how crazy things get. I won't say that I'm hooked but, sure, I'm more than happy to follow him through another novel or two. Dude's got charisma. ( )

strained credulity; not very believable presentation of American exurbia