Jack Reacher books

author is Lee Child (not his real name). If you look the website, you discover that pub-date order is NOT character-chrono order. I wish publishers would fix that on the covers. I also wish they would in general put series order number on books. These have neither.

After the second movie of Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise, I decided I would read a couple. Got the first one and the last one for xmas.

They remind me of John D Macdonald's Travis McGee. And Tom Cruise looks nothing like Reacher in the books. Reacher in the books is 6-5, weighs 220-250. That's nearly a foot taller than Cruise, and probably 50-75 pounds heavier. A guy that size is going to be physically imposing no matter what.

As of this writing, I've read the first three published. Went to the used bookstore last weekend and got a couple of all the ones they had; have subsequently ordered the remainder via abebooks.com (better prices than Amazon was showing for used copies).

[Later: read a few more. Reading order seems irrelevant. They are mostly better plotted than Macdonald; "Echo Burning" felt exactly like a McGee book. McGee was essentially a "personal avenger", and Reacher is having a similar feel. Child avoids the issue of recurring characters by having Reacher constantly on the move around the country. Macdonald avoided it simply by not having them, as though anyone's life is like that; McGee lived on a houseboat but never really went anywhere in it.]

The stories move pretty fast. Good excitement, action. Not perfect, but good.

By not perfect I mean: if you're an author, and you're going to write about real places, you need to be present at those places at the time of year you write about before you say anything about the weather.

Book #3 takes place briefly in two places I lived, and makes mistakes about both. Dallas and Honolulu are the places. It's June. Author says something like "temp in Dallas was it's usual hundred degrees". Nope. Sorry. Not in June. Not Dallas. Lived there a decade. 100 degrees doesn't start until mid-July or so. Not June. And then Reacher flies to Honolulu, whereupon author says the humidity in Honolulu was just like Dallas. Nope. Sorry. Not ever. Honolulu is going to have much higher humidity, given that, well, you know, the largest body of water on the planet is one of the boundaries of Honolulu. Depending on the wind, if there is any (leeward side of Oahu, so not nearly as much as Kailua, where I lived), the temp is likely 90+, but not 100--the humidity is probably 90+ as well. But in Dallas? in June? The humidity is at its highest at ~6am, and that amount is 75%, and it's not 100 degrees F. In the afternoon, when the temp is highest, the humidity is 25%. Seriously dry. (Not the hottest place I've been, that was Tucson, summer, it was 110. Bone dry, too. Ouch.) I live in Virginia now, outside DC; it is readily possible for the weather to be 98 and 98, and *that* is uncomfortable. DC is like that. So no, the humidity in Dallas is NEVER like the humidity in Honolulu.

But yeah, please visit, or talk to a resident about this stuff...mistakes like that make you the author look lazy. And these statements are in no way critical to the plot, just throwaway lines. Still...lazy.

[Later: Number 5, "Echo Burning", is a really weak/stupid plot. That one really feels like Travis McGee. #6 is back to a better plot.]

#4 has some people getting in effect drowned in a bathtub of paint. He writes that after what is a day or two "the paint will have a skin depth of 1-1.5 inches. Clearly he didn't test this--24 hours of paint open-air in a bathtub and you might have 1/16" someplace that was really dry. I'm not sure how long 1 whole inch would take, but probably weeks to months. I've had paint remnants in cans out open to dry so I could dump them in the trash can, it seemed to take forever for that last little bit to harden.

A couple of them have really stupid plots. Then there's the several where there's a predictable "showdown at the deserted farmhouse" conclusion.

[Later later: I've read about 2/3 of them. The ones that have good plots are good stories, but none are "Where Eagles Dare", and REALLY not "The Bourne Identity". There are some very good ideas in here, but they're still small. I don't remember Travis McGee too well, but these all feel better than that, but not as good as Maclean, Ludlum, etc]

[Also: why I could never be a writer: one of them has two movie quotes. I couldn't write a novel without having A LOT of movie quotes--I can't hardly have a conversation without using movie quotes, so there's no way I could write a book without them.]