Better Off Dead: The unputdownable Jack Reacher thriller from the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling authors: 26

It has come to my attention that BETTER OFF DEAD Jack Reacher, is my last book needed to be completely read to fiver the entire series, I’ve done two reviews before this one and I will dedicate this one as an overview of anyone looking to read these books. I started a few months ago reading the Jack Reacher series due to one of my Mum’s friends handing me it as a suggested read with the words “You’re going to like it, really good read...” and so I took it, thought nothing of it and started to read. But it was only when I left their house after asking what the series and author’s style that I became remotely interested. So now here I am, a few months later to review the series as a whole. Whilst the first book I read of the series was a real banger of which I think it was the newest one IN TOO DEEP, I think... but anyway it was a great page turner filled with detail and one of the best books I’ve read so far. This of course made me want to purchase more of the same series books and when I realised how much books were in the series I went ahead. After reading a few, the themes and situations that make you able to picture the scenes in your head, immerse yourself in Jack Reacher or any other character’s shoes, marvel at the author’s dedication and countless hours structuring some of the most intense and popular chapters of crime, it got the better of me. I bought the whole series, WHOLE! Mostly online. The length of the books is adequate for a good read and takes me around a month to complete nightly reads of one to two books. Read them in any order or as advised, search up the titles in order of the events of Jack Reacher’s life. Or date if publication. Some of the themes are different and include third or first person perspectives. Some switch between these and some short stories of which I have not read; focusing on collaborating with other authors and family members like Andrew Child, are actually whole different books using Reacher as the MC but really re engineering the structure of the books for the better. To SUMMARISE: the Jack Reacher series blends- crime, mystery, thrills, page turning chapters, good characters, humour, fighting, scenes and situations, storyline development at a fast pace with lots of detail and adequate reading times across the whole series, thanks for Lee Child - one of crime’s best authors, there are 29 times where you can immerse yourself in Jack Reacher’s POV, or his enemies. And for a hefty price, you get a 250 pound guy and a couple of bad guys each book; what could go wrong.... nothing, not when Reacher is here. BUY ON KINDLE FOR BEST EXPERIENCE; PAPERBACK FOR COLLECTING! ENJOY 😉 🔺 Involves language and romantic content, DO NOT READ FOR AGES BELOW 14 🔺 THANK YOU to Lee Child who has brought me months of good reads. 😃 NOTE: This series is being developed and new books are still being released/written.

Another Jack Reacher story and again I can’t really add to how good these stories are and this is no exception having all the usual Reacher traits. This being book 26 in the Jack Reacher series. The story is set along a deserted road in Arizona where he finds a crashed jeep in the only tree around for miles and what appears to be an injured woman. When trying to assist he soon regrets and gets involved with her after learning the woman Michaela Fenton is an army veteran x-FBI agent trying to find her twin brother Michael after receiving a SOS message from him after he became involved with some very dangerous people. The main character a mysterious and evil man called Dendoncker who everybody bar none is scared of and who is just the man Reacher loves to meet and rectify. To do this Reacher and Michaela have to first get to him which is near on impossible and only the beginning of their problems. You have all the usual exciting awesome and enjoyable Reacher bits and like it says if “Reacher is coming after you, you might as well be dead!” A good read as one would expect and although I read it in one hit I thought parts were a bit repetitive to other stories and not as gripping or as true to the original stories in this series. It is still good but not great?

The Killing Floor was a game changer. Crime fiction, as a genre, was revolutionised with the arrival of Lee Child and Jack Reacher. Some fantastic books followed. Inevitably, so too did some stinkers. Better off dead sees Reacher in Arizona. A state well set for crime fiction. Deserts make good hiding places for bodies, and predators abound. Michaela Fenton, ex army and now an FBI agent is looking for her brother. To find him means getting answers from Dendoncker; a man heavily protected and wary of outsiders. Bring it on. Reacher has always been an outsider. Reacher has his mission. Find Michaela’s brother. Reunite him with his sister. Move on. Simple enough, right? But with Reacher books, there is often a bigger underlying picture, and sure enough, that is the case here. The wider parts of the plot are slipped in throughout the narrative but the action is pretty much on tap. What I particularly enjoyed about Better off dead were the classic Reacher elements. Damage or eliminate the henchmen; the hired help. Front up; bluff your way out of tight spots. Cheat. And then when your enemy is least expecting it, go for the throat. I felt good reading Better off dead. Reacher has his mojo back. When the Reacher books get it right; they are peerless. The Killing Floor, Die Trying, Echo Burning, Tripwire; they got your heart racing. You didn’t want any interruptions and would tear through them as if your life depended on it. They got you in that zone, they clicked. But so many others left you wondering where the magic had gone. Formulaic, lacking in passion, devoid of the strong storylines and crafted violence that put Reacher books on the top shelf; a hallowed place that so many other writers aspired to but fell short. Night School signalled a new low for Reacher and Child but it wasn’t unique. The Killing Floor stands alone, and to measure books by the standards it set would be unfair. Still, Reacher fans are a loyal bunch and they rightly expect a book that sees Reacher on the top of his game. Better off Dead may not have it all off pat but it does a lot of things right. It doesn’t do that many things wrong. And, for me, it brings Reacher back as a literary character who can hold his head high.

There seems to be a consensus among some Reacher fetishists that the co-authorship arrangement with Child the Younger has somehow changed the lead character, the writing style, and/or the quality such as to render them unrecognisable to long-term fans. In fact, anyone who has read the whole series with even a hint of mindfulness will known that Child the Elder has constantly played games with Reacher's methods and motivations, with his relationship with the military and law establishments, with his skillset, his style of explaining things and the narrative technique. It's a myth that there is any single, standardised persona from which the series has now departed. And along the line, the original author has produced (without any help from his younger sibling) some (in my humble opinion) pretty mediocre instalments. So, no, Andrew's involvement has not radically changed the dynamics. However, taken entirely on its own terms, "Better of Dead" seems to me a pretty mediocre effort, with sketchy characters, too many unlikely coincidences, and too many manufactured misunderstandings. It also seemed pretty short subjectively, and the constant references to how much danger the damsel-in-distress is in are conjecturally necessary to keep up what I felt was recurring lack of tension. Also, the laborious "idiots' guides" to fairly basic bits of technology (shoehorned into the dialogue, as if the characters themselves might not necessarily understand them) seemed to me to mark a lack of confidence on the authors' part in the mental faculties of their readers. But the worst thing for me (as an author who has sat up late at night so many times trying to bring a complicated but necessary bit of the action to plausible life) was the way the narrative suddenly seemed to jump forward here and there, leaving me to imagine for myself how something was achieved. For example, how does one big, heavy man get another big, heavy and semi-comatose man out of a cellar? When the only way out is via a steep, rickety old wooden ladder whose ability to take the weight of even the first big, heavy man has previously been questioned? It's not a particularly difficult literary challenge, but one moment they're underground and the next moment they're not. Finally. The syntax. It has lots of them. Words. Quite short words. In very short sentences. It's nothing new. Not for Reacher books. But for me it's irritating. Very irritating. Not all the time. But quite often. Often enough to be irritating. Some have unkindly suggested that the title is rather apt. I disagree. It is worth the cover price. But the Childs (should this be Children???) can and have done better - individually and in partnership.

Again another brilliant story by Lee Childs

I have read every Jack Reacher story and I wonder if the magic is beginning to fade. All the ingredients are still there, but maybe plot lines have begun to be too similar and possibly over complex. There seems to be less personal interest in Jack himself and his moral dilemmas. He is more a killing machine who faces a lot more violence. Also In this novel some of the technical stuff and back history is hard to follow. Overall there is not a lot different, but after 26 novels more could change and some more personal aspects could return. Detail is Jack Reacher, but not so much. Punchier smart dialogue needs to return. The romantic bits have gone completely. It does not need a lot. Technical bits need to be clearer to everyone. Plots might be a bit more credible. I am not going to criticise the addition of Andrew Childs, because I could see a lot of the change before he joined. However in my view it is in this novel that Jack has become a lot darker. Maybe it is deliberate, but I am not sure I like it.

Excellent product

Bought to compete the full set of Reacher books so I can read them in chronological story order