Canterbury Book Library
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Worth Dying For |
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Category:
Fiction
Author:
Lee Child
Price: 140 baht
Location name: Canterbury Tales Bookstore
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| Visits: 251 | |
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Review
Written by Dave
Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel, number 15, is set in a rural Nebraska county about 60 miles north of Interstate 80, a local family, the Duncans, control the place by forcing all the farmers to use their trucking firm to haul corn and other commodities to market, a group of former Cornhusker football players are used as enforcers against farmers not willing to play along with the game. The countryside is described as flat, largely uninhabited and quite tedious, with endless cornfields. The county seat is described as a small hamlet with a pair of restaurants and not much else. Yet, it has a Marriott Courtside hotel and a fairly large police department that is not interested in looking into the Duncan clan's shenanigans. Eh? Reacher, a former U.S. Army Military Police major, was hitchhiking through the area when he got left off at a lonely motel modeled as a 1960s space installation for moon missions. Yeah, it does get bizarre here. The good guys are an alcoholic medical doctor and his indulgent wife; the loopy motel owner; and one widowed farm wife who is the only strong person in the whole county. It becomes clear to Reacher early on that the Duncan clan (no women in this family, except the wife of an adopted son) is doing more than just hauling corn with its trucking company. A pair of Las Vegas bad guys who arrive and inject themselves into the action are a good clue to that. Now, I have read every Reacher novel as soon as they were out. This is by far the worst of the lot. It is illogical (no cattle appear in this strange Nebraska county), with devastating descriptions of the local people and landscape and no redeeming qualities. If I hadn't traveled extensively through every Nebraska county and seen their reality, I would think Lee's landscape and populations were horrible, and I would hate them. But they are a fictional artifice that isn't even good entertainment. Enjoy Jack Reacher, but ignore this one. He does ride off to Virginia in the end (Reacher always wins and lives on), and I hope he finds a better place for his next battle. {jcomments on}
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Date insert: Monday, 19 September 2011 08:04
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