The Spectacle Blog
My father-in-law and I bonded years ago when he introduced me to the genre of action thrillers. It began when he loaned me a box full of the first 60 or so Remo Williams novels. I still remember that chapter two of each book began with “His name was Remo and …”
Our latest action hero has been Jack Reacher, the creation of British television writer Lee Child. Reacher (always Reacher in the series, never Jack) is an imaginative hero. He spent the first thirty-five years or so of his life on military bases. First, as a child of a soldier and then as a top military policeman. The hook is that Reacher, as a military policeman, is something like a super-cop. His targets were trained men, often devious, tough fighters without a moral code.
As he aged, he tired of his regimented life, quit the army, and became a wanderer. Reacher doesn’t even have a suitcase. He wears a set of clothes until it wears out, buys good quality English walking shoes, and carries an ATM card and a folding toothbrush. He is something of a cross between Dr. Richard Kimble (The Fugitive) and The Incredible Hulk. Big, tough, strong, and very street smart. He moves from place to place and gets involved in situations usually requiring his violent intervention.
All in all, it has been a highly enjoyable series. The kind of candy I yearned for while working on my dissertation. Upon finishing, I gorged on the likes of Reacher.
The latest, Nothing to Lose, lost me as a customer. Lee Child, the author, seems to have REALLY enjoyed the recent works of village atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. He seems to have enjoyed them so much that he had to come up with a highly improbable plot just to demonstrate how stupid he thinks Christians are. Oh, and along the way he manages to claim that nothing the American military has done since 1945 has been worth the price of men’s lives.
But Child’s little crusade against conservative protestants and American military efforts of the past sixty years wouldn’t have been enough to send me packing if the book weren’t so bad. The villain catches Reacher multiple times and somewhat inexplicably lets him go. The bad guy has a compound. Reacher spends the entire novel working his way in and out of the compound as he goes between two towns, Hope and Despair. On the one hand, the villain has put together an incredibly devious and ingenious plan to help bring about the apocalypse. On the other, Child (through Reacher) assures us that the villain is a weak-minded man who is accustomed to believing things that comfort him. It is profoundly boring, which is something I have never been remotely close to saying about any of the other books. It was literally an act of will for me to continue reading Nothing to Lose. I was determined to finish because I knew it would likely be the last run for Reacher and me.
Now, having finished, I’m sure of it. It was.
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Duke Powell| 1.2.09 @ 2:43AM
Yep, I felt the same way. I'm done. Besides, Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp would kick Reacher's butt.
ruth| 1.2.09 @ 4:11AM
Any idea why the author freaked out like this?
Alice Moore| 1.2.09 @ 7:45AM
Lee Child seems to want a strange new respect from the chattering class. In one novel(forgot the title) he has an associate of the bad guy saying how great the 2nd Amendment is for the US.
Jeffrey Deaver seems to be taking this same road in "A Cold Moon" he has a militia group out to have a bomb go off and kill US Military personnel.
Both efforts have some avatar character mounting their soap box and ruining any plot. Jeffrey Deaver may be flipping off maybe half his readership. Lee Child, like the Dixie Chicks, will find out that dissing your fan base makes you poorer in the purse. Well, maybe he has his bankroll. I wonder if Newt Gingrich would recommend Lee Child at this time.
L.J. Gibbs| 1.2.09 @ 8:58AM
Child, a Brit, living in New York has obviously succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome and is writing to please the majority of Brits and New Yorkers who hate faith and the possession of firearms by the populace. We will have to find our former Military Policemen fighting crime and terrorism sagas elsewhere.
Larry| 1.2.09 @ 9:12AM
I hope you'll write Mr. Child and inform him.
William R. Barker| 1.2.09 @ 10:33AM
Folks,
Was "Nothing To Lose" among the best of the Reacher novels? No.
Has the series as a whole been outstanding? Yes!
Give the guy a break. Let's see what the next Reacher novel brings. This was what, his twelfth Reacher novel? Instead of a conspiracy mindset that all of a sudden author Lee Child and protagonist Jack Reacher are moving Left in a political sense, Left in a spiritual sense, consider that novel writing is a commercial as well as artistic endeavor. Throwing a curve ball - a new and controversial plot pad - into the series makes sense in terms of selling books and expanding the readership. I don't see "Nothing To Lose" as a betrayal of Reacher's ideals but rather as an expansion and perhaps complication of "right" vs. "Right" in a moral sense that diverges partly from modern ideology.
(Listen... go to Child's website... read/listen to a few of the recent interviews he's given, you'll see what I mean.)
BILL
P.S. - God bless Mitch Rapp! (*WINK*)
Scott| 1.2.09 @ 2:42PM
If you read some of Child's blog entries after the negative blow back surrounding this book, he reveals himself as a bitter metropolitan aethist lefty suffering from BDS. I enjoyed his previous novels but was always suspicious as to how a limey could ever truly indentify with the ruggedly individualist American archetype he sought to write about. It turns out he couldn't.
ruth| 1.2.09 @ 3:11PM
Ahh, BDS--that explains it.
Kieran Evans| 4.20.09 @ 2:55PM
It saddens me that the closed mindedness of the author of this article, the near redneck levels of indoctrination into an unquestioning support of the "boys" out fighting battles that should never have started and his similiarly devout faith in god has clouded his vision over what was a thoroughly good book, and by no means a disappointment to Lee Child as a literary talent.
When you say "On the one hand, the villain has put together an incredibly devious and ingenious plan to help bring about the apocalypse" I am struggling to understand what book (or comic) you were reading that you are now confusing Nothing To Lose for, as i can assure you, nothing at all on the scale of apocalypse is involved in the story. Not at all. Not even close.
Again, your decision that Child tries "to demonstrate how stupid he thinks Christians are. Oh, and along the way he manages to claim that nothing the American military has done since 1945 has been worth the price of men's lives." is, unsurprsingly, over exagerated. As a comparison to the second world war, recent military ventures like the war in vietnam, or the unjust war in Iraq are nowhere near equal. But Child does not at any point infer that the lives of our soldiers were wasted, he is however correct in saying that the wars were not worth the lives lost on them, because the men fighting them were ten times the men who started those fights.
Your inability to acknowledge the slightest problem with the way your country is run epitomizes what is wrong with patriotism these days. You can support and love your country without becoming a blind opinionless minoin of the state. I love my country, but i know bad decisions are made constantly, and am not too brainwashed to voice my disapproval.
As a religious neutral (and no, that does not mean atheist) and sensible human being, my senses tell me that Lee Child's ability has not diminished, and he has no secret agenda in writing the novel. It is not to point and laugh at christians, nor is it to play down the successes of the military. It is a novel the same as any of his other books, and is written just as well, despite being 12 stories into the life of Reacher.
Rich| 5.29.09 @ 7:33PM
Like most people commenting on this review, I am a fan of the Reacher series. Some of the novels start slow, some quickly. This one starts slow and never really gets a good rhythm. Very slow. Once the evil dude's plot becomes clear - very silly. I doubt this is the last for me - nowhere to go but up from here.
Mr. Evans may be correct about Child's abilities, but this novel doesn't support his case at all. The action bits are really dull. It's pretty bad, compared to the other Reacher stories, or Dr. Seuss for that matter. If an uninitiated friend wanted to read a Reacher novel to see what they're all about, I would pretend "Nothing To Lose" did not exist.
Jennifer| 6.2.09 @ 2:21PM
You are cutting off your nose to spite your face if you choose to stop reading Lee Child based on your own inaccurate interpretation of a passage in Nothing to Lose. Not only is Gone Tomorrow the absolute best book in the series by far, but Lee himself explained that particular controversial passage from Nothing To Lose during his recent book tour. Turns out it was copied verbatim from an email Child received from an active duty Army captain serving in Iraq. Child did not write those words - but he felt that the serving army members who read his books and write him long emails deserve to be heard. So he put someone else's words into Jack's head.
The opinions of that military officer may not reflect your own personal beliefs, but his rank (and obviously extended service), not to mention his unique perspective and personal experiences should at the very least command the respect of stay behind armchair warriors like yourself.
A strongly conservative Texan, I have no beef with anyone sharing both sides of the coin. War is ugly and serving your country and doing your duty does not mean you have to be a blind sheep without an opinion of your own. The captain could not express himself within the restrictions of his command, so he let Lee Child do it for him.
Bottom line: If you stop reading Lee Child based on that one paragraph, then I am sure he is getting the better end of the deal than you.
Kathryn Pavik| 6.4.09 @ 11:00PM
I can only say that I will never lose faith in Jack Reacher. Lee Child is a fantastic writer. I look forward to each book, and the year between seems too long.
Sanjeev | 7.31.09 @ 8:52AM
Please read Gone Tomorrow. I am sure you will come back to the series! I agree that Nothing to Lose was not the best but Lee Child has done it again with Gone Tomorrow. Absolutely the best in the series so far.
Marv| 8.3.09 @ 6:38PM
As it happened Nothing to Lose was my first Reacher novel. Picked it up in the airport last month. Pretty good read until the goofiness started. I have to admit that I went on to read two others since. Fortunately they were better. He obviously does a lot of research for his novels, but wherever or from whomever he got his info on "religious right" was...let's say faulty intelligence. His depiction of fundamentalist Christianity was fantasy, maybe wishful thinking.
Christine| 1.28.10 @ 12:09PM
Nothing Left to Lose was the first Jack Reacher novel I read. I don't expect the author to educate me about politics and religion. I look to be engrossed and entertained and I was not disappointed. Truth is usually stranger than fiction. Being a Brit and living in the US for 30 years, most of them as a naturalized (voting!) citizen, maybe I can see things from a different perspective. Not only do I think Jack Reacher is thoroughly believable as a human being, I am amazed at the insight that Child shows into the minds of the US military. I lived near Fort Bragg for many of my years here and I knew many very special soldiers of various Special Forces types!
Child must know some of the same people I do - they are encompassed in his books.
John Blair| 2.28.10 @ 9:48PM
Does Jack wash his underwear each night in the hotel sink and then sleep in the nude or does he sleep in his underwear or sleep nude and wear the same underwear until he buy new clothes including new underwear. Does he buy throwaway razors. Apparently he doesn't use deodorant and only uses shampoo if the hotel provides it. Does he practice unsafe sex? I never hear of him having a condom.
FactsOn.net | 4.22.10 @ 7:54AM
Nothing to Lose was the first reacher book I read. It was pretty boring definitely in the beginning, but the ending was probably one of the best endings Ive ever seen.
I just didn't see it coming and it really "ended things" hahah.
With that said, The Persuader is my favorite so far. I've read about 6 or 7 so far. Lee Child is talented for sure... I really enjoy his books, even the slow parts.