Running Blind

At last! Running Blind is finally an entry into the Jack Reacher series as good as the initial book Killing Floor. The central mystery is worth chewing over and will keep you wondering for the majority of the novel, and the amount of Reacher narrative versus anyone else's is kept to an absolute minimum. Because of the way the book was written, it avoided a great deal of Lee Child's weaknesses: the antagonist stays mysterious instead of characterized as an unredeemable comic evil supervillain and subplot characters are effectively non-existent so you don't have to suffer with poorly characterized and irrelevant passages.

It is awkward to write this review mainly slagging on Lee Child. But honestly Running Blind is a great thriller that's difficult to put down, and if you're here after 3 books, then you will be very happy to know that the negatives from the previous novels have been improved on. This is highly recommended and I'll probably even do a re-read.

The reviewer reached the last word of the book and threw it across the room. It was a large room with two windows looking out on a quiet city street. In front of the windows was a couch facing inward. It was a red antique couch, its color matching the red in the oriental rugs on the floor. There was a large oak desk in the room on which sat a flatscreen monitor. The monitor displayed a web browser open to goodreads.com, the text on the page asked "What did you think?"

The reviewer didn't know what to think. He'd wanted to rate the book even lower than the last of its series but he'd rated that one one star, the lowest rating possible. He could go back and change it to two stars, since that rating was partially in reaction to the sadism he was forced to read in it. Otherwise, it was clearly better than the one he'd just thrown.

Throwing a book was something he'd just read about before and never imagined himself doing it. He was a rational person, a smart person, not prone to impulsive acts, but this book demanded some kind of physical response. Burning it would suggest censorship, tearing the pages out would leave him with too much to clean up afterwards. So throwing it would be. He was careful not to let it hit anything breakable.

In flight, bullets are affected by three separate forces: gravity, air resistance and wind. Gravity pulls down on the bullet, causing it to drop below the line of sight. Air resistance (or “drag”) slows the bullet with a force proportional to the square of the velocity. Bullets from most rifles travel at super sonic speeds. At these speeds, the mathematics needed to determine the drag is so complex that tables of coefficients are required to do the ballistics calculations.

A book, even one with a hard cover, has too much air resistance to cover much distance and even so, this was a small room. The book hit the wall and fell straight down, landing open to page 53, which was a prime number.

This book did not totally follow the formula established by the three which preceded it. In certain respects it remained the same. It had the endless detail, not really relevant to the story but used to maintain the suspense over time. The villain, though not deformed, was ugly and unlikable. There were women in danger. Law enforcement was crippled by rules which Reacher was able to ignore. There were the observations about military culture and criminal culture and masculine culture and feminine culture. Reacher understood them all while those around him were mainly oblivious. And there was a deadline that needed to be met, just in time.

The reviewer had believed that formulas were a bad thing, making books too predictable and cliche ridden. After reading this book, he'd discovered he was wrong about that. He learned that certain aspects of the formula were necessary to keep the reader involved. Reacher needs to be better trained and stronger and smarter than anyone else but in this story, he was often wrong and his strength and training less important except in a few scenes. The reader needs to identify with him and feel good doing so. He needs to follow a code of behavior which is superior but in this book, he tongue-kisses another woman while still paired up with his girlfriend.

The story needs to be plausible and the false leads need to be satisfying. This story was consistently implausible and the false leads way too false. A padre who is also a colonel showing up just at the "right" time? Another colonel with a list hidden in his drawer? The ending was too hokey to be believed and made the red herrings look like the deliberate manipulations they were.

Even throwing the book was unsatisfying. At least the addiction is broken. I need not read the next book in the series. I no longer care what happens next.

At several points in this book, Reacher felt trapped. He wanted to be a drifter and a loner but instead owned a house and was in a relationship.

I, too, felt trapped reading the series because of its addicting formula, but I have now broken free. In some ways, I will miss the addiction. The books are easy reading and flow over you while being undemanding. Reading them is like having the TV on in the background to feel less lonely, even though you aren't really watching.

But the TV show has to follow the correct conventions to fulfill its role as a safe companion in an otherwise scary world.