Running Blind (Jack Reacher, No. 4)
by Lee Child
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Book Reviews of Running Blind (Jack Reacher, No. 4)
Book Review: Running On Empty
Summary: 3 Stars
Make this my fourth entry into the world of Jack Reacher, having already read the first three books in this series. Of those, I loved Killing Floor, didn't love Tripwire and enjoyed Die Trying. When I started Running Blind, I was just happy to be back with Jack Reacher, a character who guys can relate to and women can fall for. Who doesn't like the brooding bad boy type with the Robin Hood vigilante mentality?
I was so caught up in this book right from the beginning. As a matter of fact, I emailed a friend of mine just to say how much I was enjoying the Child's book I was reading. At the time of that writing, she was already on his current book so I was far behind her. This book was everything Tripwire wasn't in my opinion. It was fast paced with Reacher helping the FBI, obviously under duress, and his relationship with Jodi is still in tact. As with all of Jack's appearances, things will start to fall apart shortly.
While Jack is always chasing someone very smart, we all know that he is that much smarter. In this case, it's a serial killer bent on doing away with former Army employees who have left the force due to sexual harassment. The FBI profilers have narrowed it down to the exact type of person the killer is....someone exactly like Jack. This hunt will take Jack from the east coast to the west coast and back again until he figures out who the culprit is. We already know he's smarter than they are so we know he's going to be successful.
I loved this book until......it got to the ending. I see many other reviewers have complained about this so just add me to the list. When are authors going to stop neatly tying up their books with ridiculous scenarios. I have something else to say and I don't want anyone who hasn't read the book yet to read what I'm going to say so please move on to the next review.
I said move on to the next review or else you're going to read something you don't want to read. Okay so here's my beef. Am I crazy? Weren't there more than two paragraphs in the book where a colonel is sitting at his desk, forty to forty-five minutes away from Quantico, looking at the list of eleven women, four of which had already been killed. If this wasn't the killer, who the heck was he? Was he the chaplain who appears out of nowhere in the end. A chaplain who comes walking, not even driving, up a hill in the Pacific Northwest. And I'm so sick of authors making everything an inside job. It's like if a woman gets killed, the authorities first look at the husband. I'm now beginning to think that every time I pick up a mystery, I should just look at the cops investigating the case to come up with the killer. I'm sick of it, I tell you. Okay, enough of my rant. I'd love any of you who have read this book to please leave me a comment so I can know who the heck this colonel was and what part he played in the book.
Up until the ending, this book was almost five stars for me....the ending dropped it down to three and a half.
Book Review: Not his best, but I still read it in 2 days/nights
Summary: 3 Stars
I discovered the Jack Reacher series last December when I splurged and bought a few dozen used books from amazon to read beginning over winter break for sheer escapism from work. I finally got around to starting the series (in order) a couple of weeks ago. I gobbled up the first 3, really enjoying the ride, and started on this one. Like the others, it has an intriguing premise that hooks you right away -- in this case, women being murdered in an undetectable manner and being found naked in their bathtubs, which are filled with Army green paint. Reacher is basically blackmailed into helping the FBI find out who the killer is. So far, so good -- Lee Child really knows how to keep you turning the pages. The problem is, I figured out who the killer was and the killer's motive WAY too early -- before page 100. I kept hoping I was wrong -- I actually like to be surprised! -- but I wasn't. The ending was a huge disappointment, as it seemed HIGHLY unlikely that such a thing could ever work. In addition, I found several plot holes in this book that were annoying -- e.g., since there's no way Reacher could have contacted his colonel-friend-who-owed-him, how was everything set up and ready when he got there? And the "problem of the box" (hopefully that's vague enough to NOT be a spoiler) raises obvious questions that are never satisfactorily answered, just followed up on a couple of hundred pages later when they should have been figured out immediately. In addition, it became REALLY annoying when Reacher would figure something out but when another character would ask him to explain, he would say something like "No time," or "Later," or whatever -- this happened over and over and over again, and the ONLY reason for his idiotic responses was that the plot needed him to not reveal what he knew at that point, even though of course in real life any real person would have. And finally, I found Reacher's "interludes" with the new FBI agent annoying too -- not to be overly moralistic, but come on -- isn't he supposed to be crazy in love with someone else? Overall disappointing, although not enough to turn me off the series -- in fact, I am already 100 pages into #5 and so far so good on that one.Book Review: Lee Child - you are driving me crazy!
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great book and a great new author that I have "found" to read. But it could be an AWESOME book and it is PITIFUL that it is not. The problem is the mile-wide STUPIDITY plot potholes i fall into on EVERY book in the Jack Reacher series! Case in point: Reacher and Harper drive 6 hours to meet with Scimeca because she has a "item of interest" (don't want to spoil it for those who haven't read the book) in her house that they are looking for... one that logically would still have it's shipping label and thereby take them further in their hunt then they've been able to go so far. They find out that Scimeca had a roommate that took the label and they don't ask for her name, they don't call her from the room and ask Scimeca every detail about her they can.... THEY DON'T FOLLOW THE LEAD UP AT ALL.... THEY JUST GIVE UP AND SAY "OH WELL, DARN, BACK TO QUANTICO." That is completely illogical, and more to the point, NOT standard OP for these investigators. This type of author interference beyond the logical, just to sustain his plot eslewhere is EXTREMELY frustrating and almost makes the WHOLE BOOK fall apart. And it happens several times thru every book I've read so far. If they don't follow up on SO GLARING A TRAIL, then you have to tell the reader WHY and it has to be LOGICAL and REASONABLE. Not just blank and not there! WHY, WHY, WHY is your editor allowing you to get away with this! F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-N-G and FIXABLE! These books are still worth the read, I mean, you had me at page 3 of your first book, Killing Floor, with "I wasn't going to lie on the floor. Not for these country boys. Not if they brought along their whole police department with howitzers." The main character, Reacher, is highly intelligent and methodical, besides being a wandering gypsie, so when he lapses into these periods of illogical stupidity it really frustrates me, the reader, and pulls me right out of the story and instead of being engaged in the plot, i'm yelling at the author for leaving me right in the middle of an intelligent lead and closing in on it, and then just giving up for no reason, when it wasn't necessary.Book Review: Disappointing effort by a good writer
Summary: 2 Stars
This is the fourth or fifth "Jack Reacher novel I have read and I enjoyed the others far more. I can't help thinking that this was actually Lee Child's first Jack Reacher novel that he hadn't been able to get published earlier, because there is a much more unpolished style to the writing and plotting. More glaringly, Reacher himself seems less mature as a person and we are to believe that he really would go weeks without a change of clothes or a shave, with no one complaining about the smell, and beautiful women still drawn to him.
If this wasn't sophomoric and jarring enough, somehow Reacher has forgotten that all he has to do to get his FBI blackmail problem to go away is to call the head of the FBI and tell him about it. If this is really book four in the last couple of years in "Die Trying" Reacher has bailed out the FBI by rescuing a high level FBI agent and saving the FBI from a huge embarrassing scandal. We are somehow to believe that he doesn't remember this.
In "Die Trying", FBI agents are appropriately quite bright and only realistically misled from within. In this book we are to believe that even in a high end Serial Killer task force unit, they are inflexible and totally unable to even consider a new idea from a man they blackmailed into helping them. This is as ridiculous as the murder method is impossible.
You can see in this book the seeds of an excellent writer and if you let yourself go can be carried along for quite awhile (and I can forgive phony red herrings like the office in the Pentagon scene), but this is neither the quality of character or of plotting I have come to expect from Lee Child. This is a first novel kind of effort, not the polished output of a "Best Seller" quality writer.
If this is your first Reacher book skip this one completely and start with "Killing floor". If not, jump to book five and let this one gather dust on the shelves as Lee Child's worst and probably first effort.
Book Review: Whiffy detective (for want of a better term) in pursuit of preposterous killer
Summary: 1 Stars
I strongly suggest that anyone who contemplates buying this book on the basis of the strong overall rating go immediately to the one-star ratings for a dose of reality--and nevermnd the fact that they contain spoilers.
Those slashing reviews point out many of the outrageous faults of this book. I shall therefore limit myself to just two areas.
Jack Reacher is a totally immature, highly disfunctional, neurotic thug who, for some wholly elusive reason, seems to be irresistibly attractive to most women. The fact that he owns just one set of clothes which he NEVER changes over the whole course of the book and for heaven knows how long before the book starts and after it closes strikes me as making that attractiveness more than slightly improbable--but, hey, maybe some women like a man whom they can smell before they can see.
The killer's identity is painfully obvious about half-way through the book, not from any logical analysis--for their is no logic here--but from the endlessly unnecessary prominence given to the character, that character's relationships and that character's motives. If that is not bad enough, the killer's overall plan is an ancient wheeze that was executed with infinitely more skill by Agatha Christie in "The ABC Murders." Finally, worst, is the actual method of killing, for which I have just one word: ridiculous!
There is only one way in which to enjoy this sort of book: turn off all your higher brain functions and simply enjoy the rush. If you are of a disposition to do that, then this is a three-star book, otherwise it fully deserves its one-star (or lower) status.
LEC/Am/1-10