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gervase_fenI interrupted my Dagger longlist reading scheme with this, Lee Child’s nineteenth (!) Jack Reacher thriller. I think it continues the upward curve the series has been on since the misfire of book seventeen, “A Wanted Man”. In a series that has been going for so long Child is bound to repeat himself, and “Personal” does retread territory (literally) explored by Reacher in book ten, “The Hard Way”, with elements from “Without Fail” (VI) and “One Shot” (IX) in the mix. (I also enjoyed the callbacks to Reacher’s mother’s personal history, first outlined in “The Enemy” (VIII), and one of his few mission failures, the backstory to “Persuader” (VII).)
Putting Reacher in the UK – into the milieu of a B-grade Danny Dyer movie – gives Child the chance to have stylistic fun writing functional US pulp prose about mundane UK settings. Mini-cab firms, the Tube, Boots the chemist, even the M25, get this treatment. There are also some very good jokes, my favourite being Reacher arguing with a veteran gangster about legitimate targets for assassination : “I wouldn’t have the prime minister shot.” “Why not?” “I voted for him.”
I also enjoyed the set piece showdown in a mansion house built for a giant, with extra high doorways, a door handle “the size of most people’s forearms”, a chandelier “the size of an apple tree”, all of which (surely not) could be a sly commentary on Jack Reacher’s film alter-ego.
Putting Reacher in the UK – into the milieu of a B-grade Danny Dyer movie – gives Child the chance to have stylistic fun writing functional US pulp prose about mundane UK settings. Mini-cab firms, the Tube, Boots the chemist, even the M25, get this treatment. There are also some very good jokes, my favourite being Reacher arguing with a veteran gangster about legitimate targets for assassination : “I wouldn’t have the prime minister shot.” “Why not?” “I voted for him.”
I also enjoyed the set piece showdown in a mansion house built for a giant, with extra high doorways, a door handle “the size of most people’s forearms”, a chandelier “the size of an apple tree”, all of which (surely not) could be a sly commentary on Jack Reacher’s film alter-ego.
