Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Holy conspiracy theories, Batman! Did somebody take James Lee Burke and tuck his liberal rants between the covers of a Lee Child novel? Don't get me wrong - Burke and Child are two of my favorite authors - but the venerable Burke started a fast descent when his politics began to irrationally overpower the gripping atmospheric prose of the Mississippi delta and Dave Robicheaux's hard-hitting tales of southern noir. But if one were to judge Child solely on the basis of "Nothing to Lose", they might conclude that that he is already well down that slippery slope. Which would be a true disservice to the author and his readers. So this starts out as the vintage Lee Child/Jack Reacher thrill fest, with the stoic loaner Reacher alone on a desolate highway separating the fictitious and allegorically named Colorado towns of Hope and Despair. Borrowing heavily from Stallone's "First Blood" - and even a bit from Stephen King's eerie "Desperation" - Reacher wants nothing more than a cup of coffee while passing through Despair. Instead, he finds himself first ignored and then in jail for vagrancy. With a provocative and mysterious prologue, and Reacher's first fist fight by page fifteen, all the pieces were quickly falling into place for a classic Child/Reacher escape to fast action and delicious revenge. The mystery of the Despair deepened, a company town supported by a massive metal recycling plant and controlled Waco-like by the omnipresent "Mr. Thurman". And keeping with his trusted and successful formula, Child provides Reacher's love interest in the form of "Vaughan", a patrolman of neighboring Hope. But a promising start begins to fray around the edges a hundred-or-so pages in, and, by halfway through, has literally lost all "Hope". Repeated encounters between Reacher and Thurman and his thugs become tedious - even boring, unheard of in Child's pages - as the plot meanders and stumbles through incongruities and inconsistencies alien to Child's usually credible plot lines and meticulous research. But in this installment, while Child can still add depth and interest to a story with minutia ranging from the perfect cup of coffee to the physics of a cell phone call, he is inexcusably sloppy in tying together his central theme. Unlike the smart, lean, and unencumbered prose we've been conditioned to expect, "Nothing to Lose" reads with all the clarity and efficiency you'd expect in a "Code Pink" manifesto. It's a shame, really. Lee Child is arguably the standard in contemporary thriller/action fiction, and Jack Reacher is, as so well said by the Chicago Sun-Times, "...the perfect hero, loved by women, feared by men, respected by all." But not this time. Let's just hope that this episode's muddled and confused Reacher is an aberration, and that next year's entry will return to the straightforward thrills of "Persuader", "Tripwire", or "Killing Floor", rather than following James Lee Burke down a path that will not only cost him a loyal fan base, but also tarnish the great writing that justifiably has earned their fealty.