PAST TENSE - Book review

PAST TENSE

Lee Child

The 24^th Jack Reacher book, published 2018.  By chance, Reacher winds up in a small town called Laconia in New Hampshire. It was where his father was born. He decided to find the old place.  Not so easy. He gets the help of blonde detective Brenda Amos, but tracking down his father proves difficult.

Unconnected, a young Canadian couple get stranded at a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere – well, not too far from Laconia. The couple, Patty and Shorty, are being toyed with by the owners of the motel – but to what end? Was this a variation of the movie Vacancy? No, something else entirely; but just as suspenseful.

Inevitably, the two strands will entwine and when they do, blood will be spilled in true Reacher style.

For a brief while I thought Mr Child was coincidentally using a plot from my latest book Rogue Prey, which is seeking an agent or publisher; but happily there’s only a vague similarity.

This is a slow burn of a book with a satisfying ending.

Book appraisal - MAKE ME

Lee Child’s twentieth Jack Reacher novel Make Me (2015) offers more of what his millions of readers have come to expect.

It begins with the clandestine burial of a guy called Keever, which is momentarily disturbed by the passing of a delayed night train, which is significant…

Reacher has dropped off at a one-horse town called Mother’s Rest. He’s merely curious how the place got its name, so stopped for an overnight stay to find out; he doesn’t get to know until p491; in the meantime, he meets retired FBI special agent Michelle Chang and learns she’s now running a private investigation business and is the backup called in by her associated Keever...

The pair hit it off and Reacher becomes intrigued by the apparent disappearance of Keever.

Their enquiries seem to upset some locals who object to their presence. Reacher’s first set-piece of violence (p92) deters two of them effectively. Chang and Reacher’s investigation takes them beyond the town (to Oklahoma City, Los Angeles and Chicago) and delves into the unpleasant depths of the internet, where lurks the dark side of human nature.

The pace begins in a leisurely fashion and gradually picks up until the set-piece denouement.

Child has a legion of fans because he writes page-turning stories that pull you in, and this book is no exception. It’s a fast read.

Many fellow writers are not fans of his books – for a number of reasons, not least perhaps because he isn’t ‘literary’ and uses simple vocabulary. [Reacher went and took a shower’ (p68)]. He’s not averse to repeating words in the same paragraph or page. He describes at great length places and buildings that have very little relevance to the storyline or scenes in the plot.

His book titles are often quite odd, too: Make Me is a good example. The only place I found those words was on p54: ‘Plus he calibrated it to make me younger than I am.’ The words may have popped up elsewhere. The meaning can be either ‘force me, if you can’ or ‘you have identified me’ – perhaps!

He’s good at dialogue. There can be pages of it, and not that many cues to signify who is speaking because it’s obvious in the context of what is being said.  When he does employ a speech attribution it is mostly ‘he said’ – Reacher paused a beat and said, ‘Who exactly are you?’ Or: Reacher said, ‘That’s you?’  Occasionally, he varies this: ‘Interesting,’ Reacher said. He doesn’t bother with alternatives to ‘said’ and it works just fine for him and, clearly, his readers.

He injects humour. ‘It’s going to be like picking a lock with spaghetti.’ (p162)

He doesn’t use f-words, settling for ‘bullshit’ most of the time. By doing this he probably alienates some readers who prefer more ‘realism’; yet this is fiction and escapism, so these thrillers don’t have to employ gutter language to strengthen the story. Indeed, he probably gains readership because he doesn’t have his characters ‘effing’ at all and sundry.

He’s good at confrontation and fight scenes. Tension is raised and details are dispensed for what might take only a few seconds but in slow-time seem longer as the words pour out. It is remarkable what can pass in the mind in a fraction of a second at heightened awareness, and he manages to convey this very efficiently on several occasions. Adam Hall’s secret agent Quiller would treat combat in a similar analytical vein.

He’s a master at cranking up the tension in a scene:

‘I’m getting impatient here.’

Wet lips.

Moving eyes.

Urgent.

No response.

Then Reacher… (pp334/335) Very filmic.

So, whatever Child’s perceived faults, his phenomenal success suggests that he has captured that elusive readability trait other writers hanker after.  

Editorial comment

More than once Child writes: ‘Reacher said nothing.’ (for example, pp291, 353 and 407). Sometimes other characters get the same line. Interestingly, there’s a book entitled Reacher Said Nothing by Andy Martin, which looks over Child’s shoulder while he writes Make Me. (It’s now only available second-hand on Amazon, and at silly prices too!)

An observation is made when a magazine is found with a bookmark at the front of an article. Reacher’s assumption is that the magazine owner hasn’t read the article yet. (p108). This doesn’t necessarily hold up: the marker could be there for future reference, the piece having already been read.

A number of significant if minor characters don’t have names. They’re ‘the one-eyed guy’, ‘the Moynahan who had gotten kicked in the balls’, ‘the spare parts guy from the irrigation store’, ‘the counterman’, ‘the hog farmer’, ‘the guy from Palo Alto’ and ‘the man with the ironed jeans and the blow-dried hair’ – the latter is sometimes shortened to ‘the man with the jeans and the hair’. The repetition of these ‘names’ becomes tedious, though they’re probably easier for the reader to identify rather than a single name. I appreciate the predicament; multiple characters with names can become confusing. Sometimes you can identify a bit-player by their description, which I’ve done before: One-eye, Spare-parts, Blow-dry, maybe. One of the most overused words in the novel is ‘guy’; it grates.  

‘Mrs Eleanor Hopkins, widow, previously a wife and a laboratory researcher…’ (p271) Well, yes, she would be a wife previously if she’s now a widow…

Book review - The Hard Way

Lee Child’s tenth Reacher novel The Hard Way (2006) is a slow burner but nevertheless keeps you turning the pages, despite the faults, repetitions and flaws. It’s the voice, you know, it’s compelling.

Jack Reacher’s having a quiet cup of coffee when he notices a man get into a car. Next day, at the same coffee house he is questioned about what he saw. This leads him to meet the wealthy though probably deranged Lane whose wife and step-daughter have been kidnapped.  Lane can call  upon a good number of ex-Special Forces guys, but they’re making no headway. Maybe Reacher can help.

In his methodical manner, Reacher  investigates. He finds that he has to do it the hard way, ‘start over at square one, re-examine everything, sweat the details, work the clues.’ (p129)

When he finally tracks down the kidnapper (searching New York, including Morton Street [fame at last?]), he realises too late that he has made a monumental mistake, which is kinda rare for this guy. The story moves from New York to old England.

Apart from a would-be thief getting a broken wrist, there’s not much action or violence until page 364 (397 pages in the book). Violence is spoken about, but it’s always second-hand, reported speech. One particular reported action is harrowing enough, so maybe it was as well to ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’ in this instance. If judged as a thriller, there’s too much talk and not enough action. And yet, and yet… You want to turn the page!

Reacher’s a hard man, but he possesses compassion. He can be passionate too. And violent when the cause demands it. There’s some humour, as well; I liked the phrasing here: ‘Up to the minute décor, a lot of minutes ago.’ (p252)

Editorial observations.

Repetition. This is overdone. Yes, sometimes it’s there to boost the tension, stretch the suspense. At other times, it just seems tedious. Take for example:

A guy: ‘You’re not wearing a watch.’

Reacher: ‘I always know what time it is.’ (p10)

‘You’re not wearing a watch,’ Lane said.

‘I always know what time it is.’ (p31)

This knack of Reacher’s, to always know what time it is, crops up often throughout.

Also, an explanation of ‘the hard way’ (see above) occurs again on p251, a mere 122 pages after the last one…

Annoying. ‘Reacher woke up and found himself all alone in the living room except for Carter Brown.’ (p65)

Now, he was either all alone or he wasn’t. Maybe: ‘Reacher woke. The only other occupant in the room was Carter Brown.’ That works.

Nothing wrong with this next piece, though it’s one of my personal bugbears which I try to avoid: ‘Then he went over it with Jackson. Jackson had a year’s worth of local knowledge which was less than Reacher would have liked, but it was better than nothing.’  (p357) Juxtaposing the name Jackson at the end of one sentence and then at the start of the next; I’d avoid. The second sentence could have worked like this: ‘Though less than Reacher would have liked, Jackson had a year’s worth of local knowledge, and it was better than nothing.’ [Plenty of other variants, I know…]

Unbelievable. Reacher is told that you can send written words by cell phone, and he didn’t know. This is 2006. I know Reacher does not possess a cell phone. But Reacher is an observant guy; so, he hasn’t seen people texting on their phones in the street, in the coffee shops? Don’t buy it.

‘… he was doing something he had never done in his life. He was buying clothes in a department store.’ (p272) I could believe he hadn’t done it for a long time, but find it hard to believe he’d never done it.

Reacher suggests staying in a low-profile London hotel, ‘where they don’t look at your passport and they let you pay cash.’ British hotels don’t require guests to show passports. Obviously they may require some kind of ID, but cash would, as suggested, obviate that.

Driving across flat Norfolk (‘probably the flattest in the British Isles ‘ (p357), Reacher observes a destination but sees far too much from the road, front and back door, etc., as if viewing from a higher vantage point. (p302)

‘…he started to pick up tiny imperceptible sounds…’ (p352). And yet imperceptible means ‘so slight, gradual, or subtle as not to be perceived.’ Barely perceptible would have worked here.

Book review - The Man Who Hunted Himself

Lex Lander’s third outing for his hired assassin André Warner, The Man Who Hunted Himself, is his best to date.  You don’t have read the first two, End As an Assassin (#1) and I Kill (#2), though I’d recommend doing so as you will appreciate the nuanced development of Warner.

It will be obvious from the title that Warner has been hired to kill himself – that is, the unknown assassin of Jeff Heider, an American villain.

Warner has a code of conduct; he will only kill villains, those who deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth. He has no option but to accept the task, otherwise someone else will be hired and he would eventually be tracked down as the target. His best option is to set up a fall guy as the ostensible murderer. Perhaps someone from an opposing gang. If only it were that simple.

Lander fills his 365 densely written pages with detail upon detail in his first person narrative, and in so doing creates a convincing characterisation of Warner who is flawed, obviously, with a sense of humour and not averse to self-deprecation. Warner is knowledgeable about cars, guns and women, and yet beneath the surface arrogance is a haunted man seeking the solace of love and family.  Perhaps, this time around, that is within his grasp. Perhaps then he can end as an assassin. If only it were that simple.

Whether Lander’s writing about Las Vegas, Nice, Paris or Andorra, you feel you are there. A very visual and page-turning thriller; and there are more adventures in the pipeline.

Any fan of Lee Child or John D. MacDonald would enjoy this series.

 

Writing – Lee Child - dubious advice

‘We’re not story showers, we’re story tellers.’

That catchy little snippet comes from the latest issue (November) of Writing Magazine, a quotation from bestselling author Lee Child. According to the article by Tony Rossiter, Child ‘believes that reading is the only essential training for a writer.’ Apparently, Child eschews the ‘show, don’t tell’ principle, adding, ‘There is nothing wrong with just telling the story. So liberate yourself from that rule.’

Who am I to disagree with someone whose books sell in their millions?

However, if this quotation is accurate, then it’s nonsense.

Whether he knows it or not, he ‘shows’ in his writing – through character point of view, description and emotional content.

‘Show’ puts the reader into the scene and into the protagonist’s mind. That, to a large extent, is what makes the Jack Reacher books popular: character. You can’t have ‘character’ without ‘show’.

There is a place for ‘tell’ in narrative – to move the story forward a little faster, to skim over some boring life bits. But if you want reader involvement, you need to ‘show.’

As for reading, I totally agree if you want to be a writer then you must read – ideally, widely, both fiction and non-fiction; a little poetry wouldn’t go amiss, either.

So, if you want to try the hard way to find a publisher, follow his advice... but don't hold your breath.