- Jack reacher books recommended reading order code#
- Jack reacher books recommended reading order series#
I do understand that some people like that stuff though. Some fights – often fisticuffs, rather than gun battles – run for a few pages, and I just read the first sentence of each paragraph to know what’s happening, because the details aren’t important. The fight scenes are also too detailed for my taste. Another element that I find annoying – and that I skip – is the detailed descriptions of firearms, with an almost erotic discussion of their features, muzzle speeds, and deadly effects. While that style may work with the character, it’s a bit frustrating. In the first novel, Child writes a lot in an almost Hemingwayesque style. His understanding of the military and his experience as an MP gives him a unique outlook on crime, and he is a believable character. The books follow Reacher after he leaves the Army, where he was an MP, and there are a couple of books that reach back to when he was still active in the military, including one which leads directly into the first book. But he also has a propensity for meeting female cops – and sleeping with them – so, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his lack of fine traits, seems to make women swoon easily, even though he is often described as "ugly." But they know he won’t stay long, so his exploits – always tastefully written – are just punctuations to complex stories of crime and punishment. He is also a violent man, with the reptilian part of his brain often taking over.
Jack reacher books recommended reading order series#
Because of this, fans of the series could not accept Cruise’s depiction, and a TV series is on the works for Amazon. He’s a very big man: 6′ 5" tall, or nearly a foot taller than Tom Cruise who played him in two movies, and weighs 250 lbs. This is, of course, somewhat unrealistic, but it is similar to the way in westerns some stranger would come into town, then ride off into the sunset. He has no attachments, and never stays anywhere more than a few days, unless he’s in a novel.
Jack reacher books recommended reading order code#
He helps damsels (and dudes) in distress, out of a code of honor that he learned in the military. Reacher is an interesting character, a man who roams, almost, as Child has said, like a knight errant. They are well plotted and well paced, but relatively simple in execution. They read quickly, and, in some cases, I was able to complete one in an evening.
(Lee Child is a pen name of James Grant.) I have no real interest in reading books by a surrogate author, so I won’t be reading any more. He’s announced his retirement and is passing the series on to his brother, Andrew Grant. It’s only the last one that Lee Child will write. What I didn’t know when I began re-reading these books is that the latest novel, Blue Moon, is the last one. I thought that I would perhaps save that one for a time when I wanted to dip back into the character, but decided to complete the series. I completed the first 23 novels (and one volume of the "complete collected short stories") in about two months, and put off reading the latest (or last) one until a few days ago.
So I decided to buy all of the books, a few at a time, and read them. I had read about a dozen of them, many years ago, but had not gone any further. So I went back through the series that I enjoy, and decided to re-read Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. One of them was unfinished at his death, and his agent completed it, and there have been eight more since then, writing by Ace Atkins. Unfortunately – and I’ll discuss this more later – his estate decided that it was worth containing novels with that character written by others. Parker’s Spenser series, which ran for 40 volumes, until the death of the author. I’ve been reading mysteries and crime fiction for decades, and this is a genre where there are very long series, such as, for example, Robert B. In early December, I decided that I wanted to spend some time reading a series of books.