Search - Killing Floor (Jack Reacher, Bk 1)

Lee Child has an amazing talent for presenting an incredible story in a series while allowing each book to stand alone. One will not ruin another. This book gave quite a bit of background information on Reacher while spinning a good tale. Reacher seems to always land himself in the middle of some wild, beyond the imagination, yet plausible situations. He handles the situations in a way that can be brutal but always in favor of the "good guys." When a villian gets what is coming to him (and maybe a little extra just because Reacher can), I always think a silent victorious, "YES!" Child gives us all of that while allowing Reacher to have a little romance on the side as well.

Although I love mysteries and thrillers, this book was just too graphic in its details of violence. I couldn't finish it so my rating is not entirely fair. Really, it is just me and there are lots of people who would love this.

This is my first Jack Reacher book and Lee Child novel. I picked up a Lee Child mystery with high hopes based on several reviews...but sad to say, I was a little disappointed. Perhaps it is only this series so I won't give up on other Lee Child books, but as a crime mystery, there were so many implausible scenarios. for example:

1) why does the chief of detectives, finley, allow a vagrant, unknown person (Jack Reacher) involved in the investigation of (spoiler alert!) his own brother? jack reacher wasn't just interested, at times, he was very involved and thought all the theories that it made the chief of detective look pretty stupid (even if finley is supposed to be smart).

2) actions of the antagonist(s) prove they are extremely violent and hold a lot of power in the town of margrave. yet from the actions of jack reacher, finley & roscoe during the investigations, they seem to forget this (in fact, their lack of caution leads one character to her unlikely demise in, yet again, an improbably airport scene). that either makes them idiots, but definitely does not lend credence to jack reacher's military police background, or even finley's 20 yr beat as a boston cop

3) so the "plot" or motives of the antagonists is revealed, it is kind of odd that several clues from years ago were not picked up by the chief of detective, that it had to take jack reacher, a newcomer, about 4 days to figure out.

it was enjoyable, a bit unrealistic. jack reacher is not one of my favorites, if compared to michael connelly's harry bosch.

Aother great hero like Mitch Rapp

Great book -- good mystery, good characters. Reacher's introduction is excellent, and let's you in on some of his emotional realities.

enjoyable read