Rod Stockwell

Having read all the previous titles in the Jack Reacher series, some more than once, I was looking forward to The Sentinel. I knew from a TV interview that Lee Child gave to the BBC that he was handing over to his brother Andrew. After a book a year for over twenty years he said he saw himself as the old guy. By bringing in his much younger brother as co author he saw a chance to bring Reacher more up to date. Has it worked? I'm sorry to say it hasn't for me. It's not that it is badly written. Or that it doesn't contain the essential elements of the character from the previous books. But it is just different. I think Andrew has written it with Lee Child barely supervising. The style and language are different, less edgy, with the images produced by the prose somehow blurred or confusing. I always wondered how an Englishman could write such strong and obviously American novels. Lee must have had seriously good editors but where are they for Andrew? But hey ... I'm a similar age to Lee so maybe I have outgrown it all!