Lee Child - A Wanted Man, book review

It's crap.

There, reviewed it for you.

Oh, Dear Reader you want more than that? Bloomin' heck, OK, OK already.

I've read all of the Lee Child books to date. I started reading them when catching flights to the States and have kind of stuck with them. They are an easy read, with each chapter being only a few pages long. Means they can be read easily in queues, and I guess this is why Mr Child writes them this way.

The books all feature Jack Reacher, an ex-military man. This guy is a drifter, who goes where he feels like going. Rather oddly he gets involved every so often with events that threaten the very existence of the world, as one does. You don't? Wow! Actually neither does anybody really. There's not a single person anywhere that gets involved in this type of stuff with the regularity that Mr Reacher does. So you have to suspend reality a bit, which is fine by me; it's just a book.

But in A Wanted Man this formula is really nothing more than a formula. It's quite a boring book. For instance the first third is all about him driving a car. Really gripping that. Then it's about him joining up with the CIA / FBI. Usually he shags the woman hero, but Mr Child obviously thought the book boring himself so he kills her off pretty quickly. She gets shot in the head, which is odd. Reacher is huge, she is small so she gets shot by a sniper in the dark and not him, the better target? This story anomally annoys Jack so he then goes to kill around 20 random people who work in a bank, most of them harmless white collar workers. Most of them he shoots in the face at point blank range, as you do. Then the book ends.

It just ends almost mid story line. Like Mr Child gave up on it. He should have.

Really the formula needs to end now. It's a bit boring, a bit predictable, and just silly. Like any person can just shoot people in the face in America can they, and get away with it? I'm not going there then. Mr Reacher must have killed well over 100 people in the books now, yet he's still walking around a free man. The authorities know he did it, lock him up. Please Mr Child, let him find the woman of his dreams in the next book and stop writing these silly things. You've enough money now, you don't need to keep this series going. I liked the original books - please invent a new character!

Begs the question why buy them? Well it's a bit like watching Top Gear now. You know it's utter crap, you know it's pointless and made up, you know Hammond has no personality, but years ago a few of them were good, and Clarkson a bit of a broadcasting genius in his prime, so there is hope that the next one will be. But in reality once something is past it's prime, that's it isn't it?

Sorry Mr Child. You were once very good but now you're not.

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