I can’t count how many hardcover Reacher novels line the top shelf of my library. Lee Child is that good.
MAKE ME is his latest novel about Reacher, and it’s also good.
Not bad. Not great.
Acceptable.
Once again, our hero is (a) wandering the small towns of America only to (b) bump into a beautiful girl with a gun who (c) is investigating Some Crazy Problem Involving This Small Town.
This is also the plot of about 17 other Reacher novels.
The towns change. The nature of the evil plot changes. The women change.
Reacher never does
Lee Child is one of my favorite authors, the greatest living thriller writer, and Reacher is a great character. The brain of Sherlock Holmes shoved into the body of the Hulk, funny, smart and tough. A great hero.
HOWEVER: Child isn’t stretching a single writing muscle here. Don’t think he even had to warm up.
It’s as if the devil snuck into his bedroom late one night and said, “If I promise you riches and fame, the price being you have to write the same book every year—year after year, until you die—do we have a deal?”
If we’re grading Child against other thriller authors, he gets an A.
But we’re not. There’s a huge body of work, that top shelf full of Reacher novels already written. MAKE ME sits among them.
Not bad. Not great.
Acceptable.
There is proof that Lee Child can blow expectations out of the water, when he does feel like stretching those writing muscles.
One of the few first-person POV novels he did, THE ENEMY, slayed me with clever clues, revelations and twists. I’ve read it again and again. A great mystery, and the only novel featuring Reacher in the Army.
That’s not a coincidence.
No such thing.
I hope the next novel picks up the mold in Reacher’s big, strong hands and smashes it against the asphalt. That it doesn’t feature a beautiful girl with a gun and a badge who teams up with Reacher, sleeps with him, takes down the bad guys and disappears, like all the others.
I hope the villain is memorable and, for once, a match for the hero. I hope Reacher has to truly suffer, sacrifice and change to actually win.
I hope.
Verdict: MAKE ME gets four out of five folding toothbrushes.
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