Nothing to Lose (Jack Reacher, No. 12)
by Lee Child
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Book Reviews of Nothing to Lose (Jack Reacher, No. 12)
Book Review: Something to gain?
Summary: 4 Stars
Jack Reacher, ex-military cop, known to many fans of Lee Child as "one-man justice", is again on the road. He has nothing to lose and apparently nothing to gain when he ventures into the town of Despair, middle of nowhere. "You better leave now" - that's what he hears from the town's residents, from the bar owner, town owner and almost everybody else. Little did they know that for Reacher this is a direct invitation to stay, investigate and fight.
With this preamble, and Reacher's personality, Lee Child opens for himself an excellent opportunity for another fast-read, lots-of-action thriller. In my opinion, he mostly delivers on it and does it better than in his last two books ("Hard Way" and "Bad Luck and Trouble"). The main reason is that the plot itself is definitely more plausible than in those two books (as plausible as any thriller gets!), and even though in last 70 pages or so Lee Child hurried over to finish it and left some dots not connected or misconnected, the book is still a good read.
As for many reviewers commenting on plausibility of Reacher condemning the military politics in Middle East and army in general, I also felt uncomfortable with it for a moment. But then I realized - for all of you, Reacher's fans - didn't he leave the army because the situation in it was not acceptable to Reacher anymore? And , being independent thinker, Reacher never really liked politics and politicians, from left or right wings. As much as we like people to correspond to what we think they are, they are not comics heroes. People change.
Soldiers do go to the battles and die, even when they condemn the war itself or not agree with the reasons for it. But, being human, they may accept the decisions of others not to participate and not to die for something they don't believe into. I am actually glad that in this book Reacher is more human and interesting than any cartoon version of him that I imagined before. For me, it is something to gain.
Book Review: Child Crosses the Line, Really a Pity
Summary: 1 Stars
Jack Reacher is (was) my favorite fictional character. I pre-ordered this book, based on the sensational series of Reacher novels that preceded it. (Note to self: reconsider pre-ordering books in the future as wife found same book at local BAMM store two days before my copy arrived.) I devoured this book with great relish. The first 64 chapters were vintage Child! Reacher is ever strong and street-smart, while also being vulnerable. There was the inevitable (temporary) feminine romance. And, Jack willingly injected himself into several deliciously tense situations. Child is an artist at building drama and tension and Reacher's fight scenes are, again, things of beauty.
So, what's not to like?
Imagine anticipating the latest Rambo movie for months. Then, you get to the theater and the movie starts. Sly is slicing through the bad guys left and right and you are really getting into it. Then, suddenly, Rambo leaves the jungles of SE Asia and joins an anti-war peace march led by "Hanoi Jane!" Why, you'd say "Wait a doggone minute! Rambo would never do that! That is WAY out of character."
That is the left-turn Child takes with Reacher's character. Do I feel let down? Wish that was the case. I feel betrayed, stepped on, spit on and taken advantage of. Child turns the novel, in Chapter 65, into a political diatribe that is disgusting. If he did so only with the plot, well, I wouldn't have liked it. But, he does so with his central character. That is the line Child stepped over.
I put this book down in the midst of chapter 66. In fact, I gave the book away. Short of some sort of resurrection, I cannot imagine purchasing one of Child's books again. Lee, you deceived me in the worst way. From everything I read leading up to this novel, Reacher's character would have never taken the position you had him assume in this book. It is not only unbelievable, it tarnishes the entire series of novels.
Good riddance.
Book Review: Game Over
Summary: 4 Stars
The center of gravity for the reviews on this one - currently at 2.5 stars - is just off. I was shocked - shocked, I tell ya - to see the fairly low rating when I went to post this one.
As long as Jack Reacher doesn't jump the shark on us, it's at least three stars right out of the shoot and "Nothing to Lose" was fully entertaining as Reacher uncovers the layers of evil in Despair, Colorado. I will take a star off for sheer suspense being a bit watered-down. But that's only by comparison with others in this series. Other than that, a terrific thriller, tightly plotted.
Everything else is here. The girl. The impossible odds. The coffee. The mathematical analysis. The goon. The relentless mind. And no question about who will win. Reacher is a stretch. He's got one foot on solid ground and one in fantasyland. He's out-sized. He's too good, too smart, too sharp, too strong, too tough, too calculating, too moral, too loving, too scarred, too inscrutable and, on top of everything else, he's too good at absorbing caffeine. Who doesn't want to be with him? Who doesn't want to see what mountain is next to climb. I loved the way "Nothing to Lose" started out--simple, quiet and serene--and built into an almost James Bond finish in the rain and the mud and impossible hurdles to surmount. Once you grow used to Child's comma-loathing style of writing, you have to admire how the little bricks of prose add up to a solid and sometimes over-the-top lean style of descriptiveness. The pleasant little redundancies: "Nothing was missing. Everything was there." The fun, noir-ish moments: "It was the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere." The useful volumes of trivia about mechanisms or technology, in this case some interesting stuff about how cell phones relay and how many seconds the process takes.
Don't read too much about the plot in other reviews, just let it unfold straight from the page to you.
Book Review: Caught between Hope and Despair, Child makes a political statement
Summary: 3 Stars
Working his way to San Diego from Maine, Lee Child's tough guy, Jack Reacher, finds himself in eastern Colorado walking westward from the pleasant settlement of Hope to the dingy town of Despair. Whereas the former was welcoming, the latter isn't, and the local law busts Jack for vagrancy and ultimately deposits him back on the asphalt in the midst of nowhere at the Hope-Despair boundary. Of course, this only gets Reacher riled. Against the advice of Vaughan, a sympathetic officer of the Hope Police Department whose husband is an Iraq war vet, Jack trudges back to Despair determined to find out the nature of its problem with strangers and ready to bust some heads in the process. In the course of NOTHING TO LOSE, Reacher, no surprise, accomplishes both with a bang. That's his job, the one for which his fans pay the publisher to read about.
For the first time ever I'm decidedly unhappy with a Jack Reacher thriller, and it's made me more cranky than usual. I can forgive the evolution of the story line, which hyperextends itself with at least one superfluous subplot. But Child's major gaffe is to air his (apparently) own opinion of the Iraq war through the voice of his protagonist, a bias cleverly buried in an observation by Reacher to Vaughan on the obligations of America's civilian military overseers towards the troops. While I don't necessarily disagree with his position, assigning such to a popular fictional superhero verges on the unforgivable; heroic figures are best left apolitical. (When is the last time you saw Indiana Jones take a stand on abortion or gay marriage while chasing down some hidden treasure?) Thus, I'm knocking NOTHING TO LOSE down to three stars mostly on account of the author's bad form.
Lee, if you want to vent via an interview, fine. (Maybe you already have and I missed it.) Otherwise, please keep Reacher in the realm of recreational, fantasy reading, thank you very much.
Book Review: Child gets David Baldacci Syndrome
Summary: 1 Stars
I've read and thoroughly enjoyed every Jack Reacher novel. I ordered "Nothing To Lose" weeks before its release, and welcomed its arrival. It was a big disappointment.
I'm sad to report that Lee Child has contracted the David Baldacci Syndrome. It's a malady, that turned me off to Baldacci a year or so ago, that some successful suspense writers catch after they've reach a level of success whereby their successive works are eagerly awaited by loyal readers. The symptom occurs when the authors begins to vent their own geo-political views through the mouths of their lead fictional characters.
It starts on p. 273 where Reacher says, "Because deep down to the army a wounded soldier that can't fight anymore is garbage. So we depend only civilians, and civilians don't care either." I know that to not necessarily to be the case, although there are certainly individual cases where reasonable people feel that way. My initial reaction was - well, that's interesting. Perhaps Childs has been watching BBC and reading The Guardian too much. I kept reading.
The sub-theme, wherein Child vents his frustration with the Iraq War, the military, and the government, continues to be intermittently expressed though the mouth of JR. The book has 407 pages. At page 354, I'd had enough, closed it up, and put it down for good. I neither know nor cared how ends, although in a sub-religion theme I think I saw it coming. Fifty pages short of the end, Child had made his primary point. The JR storyline was merely the vehicle.
I read suspense novels (e.g., Vince Flynn, Michael Connelly) to escape - not to be indoctrinated by a fiction writer.
The JR character has about reached his shelf life limit anyway. A guy his age is becoming ill-equipped to fist fight several large men at once. But if there is, as advertised, another JR novel coming out - count me out.