Here’s a couple of short reviews just before Christmas:
A Reacher Novel
By Lee Child
Delacorte Press
$28.00 hardcover, 384 pages, 978-0-385-34431-9 (2010)
Thank goodness Lee Child got his groove back. His last book, 61 Hours, was a mess. In that novel, Jack Reacher was tough in the beginning, tough in the end, and boring all through the middle. It had an ending which was supposed to be a cliff-hanger; I guess to make up for all the boring stuff leading up to it. Snooze.
But Worth Dying For has brought back Reacher the way fans of these novels want to see him: smart, determined, hard-hitting with his own sense of justice. The plot centers on a small town in
There is also a decades old case of a missing young girl that Reacher decides to look into, and a mysterious shipment making its way to the
All pitted against Reacher – and they don’t stand a chance.
Pure escapism. Pure joy. Reacher’s back.
Buy it on Amazon here.
By Joe Hill
Delacorte Press
$25.99 hardcover, 370 pages, 978-0-06-202095-1 (2010)
Joe Hill’s previous novel, Heart-Shaped Box, got good reviews and I read something about this book, Horns, being a riveting horror novel. It’s pretty good – especially early on in the story.
For those who don’t know it, Joe Hill has a very famous father who happens to have written about a million best sellers: his name is Stephen King. Apparently Hill wants to use a pen name to succeed on his own merits – nothing wrong with that.
Horns has a great beginning:
Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache … and a pair of horns growing from his temples.
(If you’re not thinking Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, you’re not trying hard enough.)
Ig Perrish soon finds out that having horns has advantage of making everyone he’s speaking with tell him the complete, unvarnished truth – initially to incredibly comic effect. The scenes with Ig at a doctor’s office and later at his local church are the best parts of this book. Unfortunately, the novelty of forced truth telling quickly wears off and for all his powers, Ig isn’t an engaging enough character to carry the plot along.
I sensed that Hill was just trying too hard at the end to make everything wrap up just so. I enjoyed what happened with Ig’s surprise ride in an overheated Gremlin toward the end of the novel but slogging through the final pages was a chore.
Buy it on Amazon here.
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