J H

I like the Reacher books. I really do. I grew up on late night episodes of Kung Fu, and Reacher fills that void--the former soldier, better trained than most, highly principled, now a wandering soul who becomes the reluctant hero, always finding trouble on the road to nowhere. What could go wrong? The Sentinel. Dear God. I trudged through from habit, rather than desire. I still don't know if I have it all straight. Reacher finds himself in backwoods Tennessee, where a Russian spy family, here since the 1930's and living in "the spy house," is now pretending to be Nazis in order to get the Aryan Brotherhood to take the fall for stealing a city computer that had the ID of the original Russian family spy buried in its municipal history archive, which would tell the FBI the name of a relative who was working at Oak Ridge Labs. Oh, and Reacher saves the day by protecting the city's IT manager and an undercover FBI agent who has infiltrated the Russian cell... and he outsmarts both the Russians and the Nazis as well. Whew. And seriously, what did I just read? Remember the last time Child went political? It wasn't a good book. I mean, none of the Reacher books are "good" by any standard beyond pulp fiction, but they are reliable, consistent, and they give the reader a chance to tske out a little anger on a make-believe antagonist. They are visceral, fun, and have that 1980s sense of humor that made Schwarzenegger and Stallone movies bearable. Think Commando and Cobra, with a little John McClain mixed in. That is the Reacher I want to read again. The Sentinal lost its way. Not only is the story convoluted and stupid, it isn't funny and it makes no statement beyond "Russians and Nazis are bad." Well duh. When Child, solo, is at his best, these books chime true with a typical American ethos: touching a little on our history, our mobility and wide open spaces, our regional differences, our national similarities, incorporating the potential nastiness of government and the failures of bureaucracy. When Reacher is commenting, lovingly or sarcastically, on some element of the modern west, it allows Child to use Reacher's naivete to shine a light on that issue--sometimes simplifying things to a child's level so it makes more sense. Lee Child has a way of taking in America in one breath, the good and the bad, and exhaling it through Reacher's thoughts, words, motives, and actions. At least, he used to. Makes me wonder how much of this tripe was penned his brother, Andrew Grant. I haven't read any of his books, but since the style, tone, dialogue, and plot seemed vastly different from previous Reacher books, I would guess his contributions were vast. If this is a new direction, then this was my last book.

I enjoy literature too much to finish this. Thought I would go back and read the "classics," but this one is trite, contrived, simple to a fault, and boring. The reader is not asked to do any thought. The plot is Dante's, or Homer's, done badly, the writing is uninspired, and the characters just bland extrapolations of an easily simplified tropes. Once a new figure is introduced by name, all suspense vanishes. Let's play a game: One character is named Patience. Guess what Patience is going to do Too easy? Here... Guess what Evangelist is going to do. Darn, also too easy. One of the earliest characters the hero, Christian, runs into is named Worldly Wiseman. Eye roll. Wonder what he's up to... By a certain point, for me it was page 30, you'll need the fortitude of a mule to finish. It's like being beaten over the head with a rubber mallet.