One shot, two shot, three shot more !!!!!! (One Shot - Lee Child)

Member Name: freediveheaven

Product:	One Shot - Lee Child
Date:	08/10/06 (201 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Straight forward crime thriller

Disadvantages: After reading the previous 7 I'm getting bored.

The peace and quiet of the downtown of an Indiana town is shattered by the sound of six shots, five of which find the heads of their victims with unerring accuracy whilst a sixth comes to rest at the bottom of an ornamental fountain. Within minutes the sniper and his rifle are safely making their escape whilst in the street chaos has broken out and the air is punctured by the screams of those still able to scream and the distant sound of police sirens that are only beaten to the scene only by the camera crews housed in a nearby building.

Usually the randomness of such crimes makes detection a tough process however the amount of forensic evidence left at the scene means that within 24 hours the police have their suspect in jail with enough evidence to guarantee a conviction so when 48 hours later the accused James Barr is left in a coma following an attack in prison there is little concern for his recovery. Under arrest he only words he uttered were “Get Reacher for me”, the thing is Reacher is already on his way to Indiana.

I did debate whether I was best placed to review this book, it must be the sixth or seventh Jack Reacher novel that I have read by now and to be honest I’m beginning to grow tired of the format and to be fair that means I may not actually do the book justice. Basically this is a pretty good crime thriller with a fast paced storyline and is written n an even well judged style. The problem is that after reading a number of these novels for me the initial shine has gone from them and I now find them a little predictable and the character of Jack Reacher has fundamentally stagnated and almost become too much of a superman persona.

Reacher is a former US military cop. A hard man who can handle himself. The sort of bloke that you want as a friend and not an enemy. After leaving the army following a downsizing period he has become a drifter unable to settle in any one place or form attachments with people that last. Instead he spends his days hitching from one place to another across the US living off his army severance pay and doing odd jobs, a sort of modern day character from the Good the Bad and the Ugly. As if to emphasize the lack of permanence in his life he only ever pays for motels one night at a time and only ever owns one set of clothes at any one time. The problem is that rather just being a character from a spaghetti western over time he has morphed into some sort of vigilante with the combined powers of Rambo, Terminator and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon mode (rather than a drunk uttering anti Jewish comments).

It is this development of a seemingly untouchable one man vigilante that has made the past couple of books I have read rather predictable and lacking in suspense, there is an inevitability about the ending that fails to grab my attention and I find myself reading through at a fast pace just to get to that inevitable end rather than the story pulling me along at a fast pace full of wonder at where the plot will take me.

That does beg the question of why do I continue to read these books and in part the answer can be found in the strength of the earlier work where Reacher came across as a lot more vulnerable and flawed. In fact taken in isolation this is not a bad read, it is by no means a classic but if you like a bit of macho posturing where the bad guys take a pounding then this is a worthwhile book and ideal for long haul flights or time on the beach. The storyline is fast paced and well constructed and you are fed just enough of how Reachers mind is working as he attempts to unravel the circumstances surrounding the multiple shooting and begin to pick apart the evidence of what appeared at first to be a slam dunk case for the prosecution.

The style of writing in One Shot is easy on the eye and the fact that the paperback stretches to 510 pages has more to do with the large print used than the depth of the content. Author Lee Child keeps his descriptive passages to a minimum and the prose quite basic and uncomplicated. Child himself is a British born writer based in the United States and all of his eight previous books have featured Reacher as the main character.

Published by Bantam books the rrp is £6.99 and the book is available on Amazon for £5.59 new and from as little as a penny in the new and used section. At that price you cannot go wrong as all you are paying is the postage.

For those who need it the ISBN is 0-553-81586-5.

Thanks for reading and rating my review.

Summary: Good basic novel but the genre is getting tired.