Book Review: No Last Name

I first heard the name Jack Reacher back in 2010 while reading Stephen King's Under the Dome; his character is mentioned as a character reference for the protagonist Dale "Barbie" Barbara. At the time, I probably wouldn't have put it together, but a friend in my club mentioned that this was referring to Lee Child's book series featuring the character.

Two years later one of my book clubs selected the first Jack Reacher novel Killing Floor as a selection and from that point forward I read a book a month and slowly but surely got myself up to date. Now, like any number of other Jack Reacher fans, I'm stuck waiting for the new title to come out.

Luckily for me, I was able to get my hands on the book No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher short stories. The collection includes twelve short stories, most with Reacher as protagonist and a few with him as a supporting character or even as a cameo. Like the main novels, No Middle Name includes stories told from both first and third person perspective, ranging from senty-ish pages down to less than five. Although normally I like reading short stories in order of publication, Reacher's life is sort of made up of random events punctuated by violence, so the more episodic nature of this collection worked quite well for me.

A great read for fans of the character and also a potentially good jumping on point for new readers.

Book Review: Night School

Since my friend Ron introduced me to Lee Child's Jack Reacher series back in 2012 I've made my way through the series, a book a month until catching up with the latest in the series last year, and since then I've been waiting with the rest of the fans of the series, until last month when the twenty-first novel in the series Night School hit book stores.

The novel is a prequel to the main series, so rather than following Jack as drifter/man-of-action, this focuses on him in the last few years of his career as a Major in the United States Military Police Corps. The novel begins with Jack receiving a medal and being rewarded by being sent to a professional development course, one with only three students (the others being a CIA and FBI agent) and is actually a cover for a mission that seems nearly impossible.

A transaction of a hundred million dollars has been picked up in chatter in Germany, and with a cost that high, it can't be for anything good, so the trio begins work on tracking down an American seller of something they don't know as quickly as possible.

The novel was actually a lot fun, and although I do prefer the man-against-the-world approach that Reacher takes in most of his adventures, seeing him in action as part of a team was a nice departure. A solid read and definitely one that will keep me waiting for the next.

My Next Author

Last month I finished reading Never Go Back (2013), the latest of author Lee Child's 18 books about Jack Reacher.  As I dedicate one of my books each month to reading through the collected works of a specific author (before Child it was Richard Matheson, and before that it was P.G. Wodehouse and Robert McCammon), it is now time to decide who I will be beginning with next.

So starting this month I'm going to give the works of Canadian fantasist Charles de Lint (pictured left) a try.  I've been collecting his books on and off for years in my various used bookstore runs, so tomorrow I'll begin with his first novel The Riddle of the Wren.

To date I've only read one of his books, the 1987 book Jack the Giant Killer, which was listed as a recommended read in one of my Changeling: the Dreaming Role-Playing-Game Books.  I read it in the late '90s; it was excellent and the reason I started collecting his books almost fifteen years ago (yikes!).

Anyway, I'm hoping the experiment will turn out well, over the years my wife has read an awful lot of his books and tells me I'm in for a treat.

Genre Character of the Week: Alex White

Today I finally caught up to author Richard Matheson; to be fair, I’m just talking about the novels, not the short stories, screenplays or other writings, and even then there are still a few tittles I could not track down for a reasonable amount of money (much as I love the writing, I’m not paying more than $50 for a paperback of The Night Stalker).  His latest book, Other Kingdoms focuses on the events which happened to a World War I soldier in England after he is injured in the war.  The protagonist, and this week’s genre character,Alex White.

 

The story is told from the point of view of 82-year-old horror author Arthur Black, creator of a series of horror books called Midnight.  Born Alexander White, he tells the reader the story of an event which occurred to you just after he finished serving as a soldier in WWI due to injury.  The story is one of his first loves, to two very different women while living in a small town called Gatford.

 

Although I wasn’t a fan of the author commenting on the structure of his book while writing it (commenting on nice turns of phrase or unacceptable word usage depending), it did a great job of conveying the feel of life and love at that young age (the main character is 18 at the time of the events in the story), and although more than a little whiney at times, he did come across as an honest look at a young man in extreme situations.

 

Having now caught up, I’m moving into another genre (which is tricky, as Matheson has written in Crime, Fantasy, Horror, Western, Non-Fiction and straight literature), but for me right now I’m jumping over to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series, and then perhaps to something a little more Fantasy-based.

Book Review: Killing Floor

All right – who’s been hiding these Jack Reacher books from me?  Seriously – no one is willing to admit it?  Fine then, we’ll do it your way.

Normally I’m a guy who appreciates three specific genres: Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction, but every once in a while I find an author and character in other genres I can’t help but want to follow; Lucas Davenport in the Sandford’s Prey series, or Spenser by Robert B. Parker, Heck if I’m being honest even those Gallagher siblings in Nora Robert’s Irish Trilogy, grabbed me as characters and demanded that I follow them through however many books they appear in.

And now I’ve got Lee Child’s Jack Reacher.  What’s funny is although my friend Ron brought it up as his book for book club, Reacher is mentioned in a throwaway line in one of my picks from a few years back Under the Dome, by Stephen King, as a reference for one of the characters in that book – which to be fair, Ron mentioned at the time.

So last month I dig into the first Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor, and I’ve got to say the character grabbed me from page one.  While sitting at a restaurant, Reacher sees a number of police pull up in cruisers, jump out of their cars and run straight for the diner.  Looking around he casually notes the other people present and immediately deduces that the police are there for him.  For me, this puts Reacher, who is about to get into a whole lot of trouble, in a bizarre position of control, a position he maintains throughout most the book.

I guess I would classify the book as “Men’s Adventure,” in that Reacher is almost always a man of action moving through each scene like a super-cool guy who is “The best at what he does, but what he does isn’t pretty” and the part of my brain that loves characters like these, from Spenser to Schwarzenegger’s Dutch in Predator, just eats this stuff up.  The book took me about three days to finish reading it on the bus and over lunch hours and I loved it.

Sitting on my desk in front of my right now is the second Reacher book Die Trying and assuming it’s as good as the first I’ve definitely found a new series that I’m going to have to start following.

So thanks Ron – very fun book and the beginnings of what look to be a very cool series.