Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'I doubt it,' Reacher said. 'I read it in a book once. It worked on the page. But in the real world I imagine it would have exploded and blinded me [...]"

Exactly. That's the problem with Lee Child's Bad Luck and Trouble (2007), except that many components of the plot are so ridiculous that I doubt that for most readers they would even work on the page. This is the eleventh installment in the long-running Jack Reacher series and either it is significantly weaker than the earlier books or this reader has become much more picky. I had read two or three of the first four books in the series in the late 1990s or early 2000s and generally liked them.

The novel opens with a strong and memorable prologue: a horribly suffering man with both legs broken is flown in a helicopter to his execution. At the height of 3,000 feet he is thrown off the stretcher into the night air for the final 20-second terrifying flight towards the ground.

The plot proper begins when Jack Reacher, who is living the life of a transient in Oregon, notices an unexpected deposit of $1,030 in his bank account. Obviously (sarcasm intended), it must be a message - a cry for help - from one of his pals with whom he had served as a special investigator in the military police. And although Reacher is not told where to meet his old friend (it turns out to be Sgt. Frances Neagley whom he respects a lot), he manages to find her immediately. The author again seems to self-mock his reliance of serendipity in the plot:

"Where in the vastness of LA would she be comfortable? There were twenty-one thousand miles of surface streets to choose from.
Reacher asked himself. Where would I go?
Hollywood, he answered."

Silliness like that abound in the novel, including the horrible cliché of cleverness in guessing a password, and so on and on. Everything that happens to Reacher and other "good guys" is miraculously convenient for them. They have friends in very high places who owe them favors. They have access to unlimited cash. Virtually everything that could go right in the plot does. But then it is just a silly fairy tale for "adults" so one should not expect any semblances of realism.

What I truly dislike is the author's fascination with guns, ammunition, calibers, and other technical details of weapons. Adolescents boys and adolescent "grown-up" men with weapon-centered lifestyles will be really happy with this novel. Also, they will get really solid hard-ons when they read the slow-motion descriptions of physical damage to human bodies inflicted by bullets and other weapons. They will love the truly manly language:

"We investigate, we prepare, we execute. We find them, we take them down, and then we piss on their ancestors' graves."

On a positive side the reader will find a reference to John Coltrane on Miles Davis albums. And the writing is pretty competent for the fairy tale for "men" genre.

Two stars.


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