Peter McDonald

It’s time for this experiment to end. It hasn’t worked. Sometimes a new writer, taking over a novel series can work - never perfectly but adequately like with the James Bond franchise or The Girl with the tattooed dragon series. This Andrew Child taking over from Lee Child caper is an insult to readers and near a rort by the publishers. It’s not just the cynical name change that Andrew has done, it’s the fact that he’s not a good writer and is a pale imitation of his brother. Add in that he has hardly bothered to research and develop the Jack Reacher character and creates cardboard cutout support characters with clumsy dialogue, confusing plot scenarios and wooden narrative and we end up with a very hard to read novel. I have persevered with a few very bad previous novels that seemed to have the saving grace of some input from Lee Child but this one won’t be finished by me and I won’t buy another. Buyer beware.

Box has lost it. The last couple of books showed his MAGA- type sympathies and reactionary leanings. Reader backlash obviously drove him to try and tone that down a bit with this book but he dumbed it down too much. The ending was rushed and totally out of sync with most of the novel. The mystical stuff about a third eye with the raptor is just silly. It’s a shame really. Maybe he should give this series a rest for a bit and try something else before returning.

I’ve enjoyed previous DCI Daley novels even though the plots became increasingly fatuous with international drug cartels, political intrigue and geopolitics sitting uncomfortably in a remote Scottish setting. This one is just ridiculous with druid mythology being bound up in dirty corporate dealings. It’s too far fetched and the split scene device is annoying. I found myself skipping through to get to the end. This is a shame because the location and the characters are good enough without having to resort to fantastical scenarios and high body counts. That just doesn’t happen in Campbelltown. Disappointing.

I read this book a year ago and was appalled by it then. As it’s a quiet and rainy holiday period I picked it up to give it another chance. Unbelievably, it’s worse than I remembered. The writing style is pedestrian and almost childish (pun intended) and the plot silly and convoluted. The triple narrative is beyond Andrew Child’s skills and is a mistake to undertake it. Everyone deserves a living and Andrew Child should have one writing his pulp thrillers but it’s a travesty to have him foisted on the Jack Reacher followers. It’d be better if Reacher had quietly died on the bus at the end of ‘Blue Moon’.