books

Detective
Mystery
Crime

Books like Tripwire

Tripwire

2000Lee Child

2.6/5

This isn't a review, because I just started reading this book, but I couldn't help sharing my irritation.I like Lee Child's storytelling skills, and Jack Reacher is a fun character to read about.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?For instance:"Are you Jack Reacher?" the guy asked for the third time.Reacher set his bottle on the table and shook his head."No," he lied.We, the readers, are fully aware this man is Reacher, because we've been told so at least a dozen times in the past three pages. "He lied" is unnecessary and stupid. It would have had more impact had Child simply written "No," he said.""Who wants him?" Reacher asked."My client," Costello said. "Lady called Mrs. Jacob."Reacher sipped water. The name meant nothing to him. Jacob? Never heard of any such person.The line "Jacob? Never heard of any such person," should be deleted from the page, burned, and flushed down the toilet.A few pages later, Reacher enjoys a "steak that hung off both sides of the plate at once."Is there any way for a steak to hang off both sides of a plate not at once? Are these two, irritating little words there to ensure we know that this isn't one of those steaks that hangs off both sides of the plate, but not at the same time, because it has legs and walks back and forth?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.--update--OK, I finished. Of the first three novels about Jack Reacher, this was far and away my least favorite. Besides the poorly edited, hackneyed prose, the story takes forever to get going. The first two Reacher books both have slam-bang openings that carry the reader through some of the more boring bits, but this one doesn't, which makes all the repeated verbs and interminably long descriptions of people doing things harder to get through. The first 200 pages could have been edited down to 75, and pages 200-400 could have been edited down to 100. The climactic 150 pages are pretty good, but it takes too long to get there. The first two Reacher books weren't great, but they weren't boring. Unfortunately this one is. It could have been a tight 325-page thriller, but it's a bloated 550-page snoozer. Comparisons to Hammett and Chandler are way off. If anything, Lee Child is a higher quality Don Pendleton.

Filter by:

Cross-category suggestions

Filter by:

Filter by:

Filter by:

Filter by:

Filter by:

Filter by:

Filter by: