Tripwire (Jack Reacher, Book 3)

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As in other Reacher novels, there is a fair amount of unbelievability, but we’re having fun so where’s the harm? In this one, most veterans will have a few eye roiling moments and there was one military scene that was almost laughable and made me consider that maybe British writer Child was confusing English bureaucracy with ours. The detective had been hired by Reacher’s old friend and commanding officer’s beautiful daughter Jodie. Garber had been conducting an investigation into a MIA American soldier in Vietnam, and now Reacher and Jodie must continue. Under his new identity, Allen amasses a fortune as an illicit "moneylender", before establishing himself as a legitimate businessman who offers high-interest loans to financially troubled firms unable to borrow from banks. However, his real objective is to seize control of their assets, using threats and torture to force his clients to agree to his terms. Despite being aware that Reacher's investigation could expose his crimes, Allen decides to complete one final job: the takeover of a bankrupt multimillion-dollar company owned by Chester and Marilyn Stone. Allen and his men take the couple hostage, but Marilyn is able to stall them before her husband signs over his company.

I will read the next in the series hoping for a bit more of a story but I can guess there will be a bad guy who Reacher doesn't know at first then gets entangled with and defeats whilst bedding a gorgeous female (but not defeating the bad guy whilst bedding the female – just to clear that up). The next book could decide if I continue with the series or not. I will definitely be having a break whatever happens.This isn't a review, because I just started reading this book, but I couldn't help sharing my irritation. I think what I liked best about this book was the more usual format of doing detective work and plotting ahead what you're going to look up next vs reacting to a situation (how the other books were). Maybe it's because I'm a fan of crime shows and like that procedural element or maybe it's due to it being a change of pace. I really liked the villain in this novel. He is cunning, psychotic and has extraordinary mental strength and physical prowess. A worthy adversary to our hero! There’s lots more like that, but I’m going to spoiler tag these next few. I’m not giving up the ending, just some things that happen along the way.

Okay, more like it. I have found myself running hot and cold in the Reacher series. There can be a huge eye roll factor in some of them...and there is a bit of that here. However...this one is very well constructed and the story pulled me in and wouldn't let go. I don't read thrillers much (except The Executioner and The Destroyer as a teen), but like those pulps, Reacher often beds an off-the-charts beautiful woman. "Spectacular" seems to be Child's favorite feminine superlative. All are uber-competent. She is often ex-military or has a current career in law enforcement. Jodie has had a “crush” on him since she was 15 & he was 24 reporting to her dad. Hearts & desires are strong. This part of the story’s romance descriptions are strong & can go on.... The figured out the secret mystery. “Hobie” NYC version stole Victor Hobie's identity tags in Viet Nam

Recommended

Reacher is dragged across the country trying to help a long lost friend/daughter of his favourite boss from his army days. There was no chemistry between these two and you knew they would hook up before the end as soon as they met. Women seem to swoon at Reacher and it all seems to be following a pattern. One description that made me laugh though was "like a condom stuffed with walnuts" to describe Reacher’s physique. Reacher, as written here, is a character that I simply can’t invest my time in. In another life, he was an army cop, yet his deductive skills seem to come out of nowhere, without reason, logic or a clue as to how a conclusion was drawn. He’s a mannequin that I just hoped would do something – beat on thugs or get in a shootout, instead, I get bogged down in Child’s lifeless prose. I guess it’s a good thing Reacher decided to ignore that rule when he made someone repeat themselves FOUR TIMES in the previous chapter or else he might have had to kill himself on the spot. In one novel, Reacher recalled that he mostly finished near the top and once won in series of world-wide military long-range shooting competitions. This foreshadowed the rare instance in which hitting targets at 1000-yards was important to the plot. More often he makes do at seemingly "long odds" with pistols. In those cases 4-to-1 is nowhere near an even fight.

It’s the kind of book that has somebody repeating questions a whole bunch of times while other characters ponder things so if you’re already irritated you should probably avoid it. Hobie looks out the window of an apartment in Manhattan and thinks this UTTERLY RIDICULOUS thought: What we learn later as part of the twist at the climactic moment is that Reacher doesn’t actually go to St. Louis but is still in New York. Why didn’t he go? And this is the actual quote in the book: “Why fly himself all the way down there when there were telephones, and he had already built a working relationship with Conrad?” Unfortunately, his prose is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Most irritating of all, it's not irredeemably bad, it just needs a good editor. Who is Lee Child's editor? Does he even have one?

So the guy who made another person fly from Dallas to Honolulu to New York just to meet with an old friend of his for four hours suddenly realizes that telephones exist and that he can call up people to get information on them, particularly if you actually know the person at the other end of the line. The second thing that seemed to define this book was Reacher not having full confidence about everything. He seems more human in this and at the same time even more awesome than regular humans. It looks like he's wrong about a lot of things and he still keeps at it, like a sledgehammer. Child still has a tendency to slip into excessive detail now and then. I bet he loves to blather on and on at parties.

Mere beauty does not trip Reacher's trigger. He tips waitresses. He sleeps with women who could drop you in a firefight.

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Well, let's look at an example. Reacher has been in Florida when he's drawn into the "mystery" (no spoilers, sorry). He's been making a living hand digging swimming pools. Once he's drawn into said mystery however events demand he leave, at once. I could go on and on, but I won't. Tough guy characters need tough-guy prose. To properly craft terse, tough-guy prose, Child needs a good editor. He doesn't have one. Another thing is that the book constantly contradicts itself and then goes out of its way to underline that it’s doing so in the most forehead slapping way possible. For example, at one point Reacher thought he knew how some thugs would come after him and Jodie. Yet they use a different tactic which takes him by surprise and almost works. Afterword, Reacher calmly notes that he hadn’t thought about them doing that which was almost a fatal mistake. Yet later in the book when it looks like an assumption that he made was wrong Reacher has a complete meltdown about it where he bemoans the loss of his once perfect record at following his hunches and wonders what he’s supposed to do in life now that his skills have so obviously failed him. So Reacher shrugs off making an error that almost gets them killed, and yet when a blue sky guess he made that has no immediate potential impact looks like it might be wrong he falls apart. And you can’t even say that Reacher viewing the remains in Honolulu was critical because he just figures out what his old buddy already knew, and that’s not even the really important part of the story. The classified stuff that the guy finally gives up is the key stuff. Which he could have done OVER THE GODDAMN TELEPHONE!