books

Detective
Adventure
Crime

Books like Killing Floor

Killing Floor

2006Lee Child

1.2/5

This reads like an '80s action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.A big tough ex-military guy drifts into a small town and is sucked into uncovering a vast criminal conspiracy through completely unbelievable coincidences. - Check.Hero has a cool, manly sounding name: Jack Reacher. - CheckHero is quickly given a personal grudge against the villains. - CheckBad dialogue. - Check.Stereotypical villains including corrupt businessmen and politicians. - Check.Hero finds a few trustworthy allies, but is betrayed at some point. -CheckHero shacks up with hottest girl in town within two days of meeting her. - CheckHot girl gets kidnapped by bad guys at some point. - Check.Stuff blows up real good at the end. - Check.I know this is a really popular series these days, but unless it gets a lot better in later books, I just don't get it. I've read far better action scenes from guys like John Sandford who actually write thrillers that have plots that hang together and don't trot out every action movie cliche in the process. Plus, there are massive gaps in logic. A murder victim turns out to be a federal agent who is working on a super-secret case that is so important that it literally threatens the United States. Yet, after he's killed and it's reported, nobody else from the government even shows up to check it out. WTF? I can gloss over unrealistic procedural stuff in the interest of a good story, but since this isn't a good story, the plot loopholes are too horrible to ignore.Another problem is that Child couldn't make up his mind if he wanted to write just an action novel or a detective story, and he tried to split the difference. Not good. Reacher is the worst fictional detective I've ever read. Giant clues are put in front of him that anyone who has ever read a book or seen an episode of television since 1962 would instantly recognize, but he misses them. Yet, when called for, he can make ludicrous leaps of intuition that would make Sherlock Holmes scratch his head at the sheer implausibility of them. This might have been a better book if Reacher was just a revenge driven killing machine mowing through the bad guys without the pretense of playing detective.This would have been 1 star, but I gave it an extra star because the main piece of the criminal plot is actually kind of clever and not something I'd read before. Unfortunately, it's the only original thing in this book.** Update 4/10/16 - I recently read another crime novel that used an identical idea of (view spoiler)[ bleaching $1 bills to use for counterfeiting purposes (hide spoiler)]

Filter by:

Cross-category suggestions

Filter by:

Filter by:

Filter by:

Filter by:

Filter by:

Filter by:

Filter by: