Mixed Pickles - the Book log 2012

Series characters - doncha just love 'em? There's something about coming back to the same person time after time, knowing how they are going to react, what their moral code is. Lee Child's Jack Reacher has been around for a while now - thirteen books - but this is the first of them, and the first I have read. Now why haven't I done it before? Child is right there on the bookshop shelves with all the "C"s that I read so avidly - Crais, Connolley, Coben, Connolly... but there's something about the author's name that I have always found a little offputting; prejudice against the name "Lee", perhaps. And then there's the description of Reacher himself - six foot five, two hundred and forty pounds...

... I remember when it was sufficient for a hero to top out at an even six feet - but then I remember a time when you never saw a girl more than about five feet eight tall, so maybe better diet has worked for heroes too.

I should have ignored the prejudice. Reacher works, in a hard-boiled, tight-lipped, avenging angel sort of way. Women fall for him at the drop of a gun, men respect or fear him, he's not afraid to fall in love, kill a bad guy, or walk away from a woman when it's for her own good.

The plot is a standard format - lone stranger wanders into town, gets banged up by the local police, uncovers dirty doings. But the prose is terse, snappy, driving, and the twists are surprisingly effective (and effectively surprising), and the characters are sufficiently modelled to garner interest and sympathy. I am sure I have seen the major plot device before, but maybe it was Childs who used it here for the first time so I won't hold it against him. I shall seek out more of these; not too frequently, but regularly.