Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I thought maybe I'd simply struck Lee Childs on a bad day when I read the execrable The Affair- after all, a series can't be that bad when it manages to maintain readership for 16 books, can it? I thought I'd do fair duty, and pick up another one.
Bad Luck and Trouble isn't as bad as The Affair, but it's not far short. Once again, it's a series of clumsily-narrated, unbelievable escapades in violence and bull-headed machismo, glorifying the simple-minded excesses of a cast of sociopathic cartoon figures without a shred of depth, sympathy or character arc between them. Child is so busy portraying Jack Reacher, the titular hero, as some kind of modern Conan-equivalent, complete with all that character's overly-superhuman attributes, that the plot is cobbled together only to give the reader scene after scene of climaxless build-up. RReacher yawns and swats one-handed any obstacle that gets in his way, over and over again, until the reader couldn't dredge up any enthusiasm should he rip the turret off a tank and start swinging it round his head, Hulk style.
There's only so much enjoyment you can get from listening to someone bang a one-note drum. I've reached that point with this series after two books.
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