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THE� ‌GREAT� ‌COMPLETIST� ‌CHALLENGE:� ‌In� ‌which� ‌I� ‌revisit� ‌older� ‌authors� ‌and� ‌attempt� ‌to� ‌read� every� ‌book� ‌they� ‌ever� ‌wrote�

Currentlyâ€� ‌inâ€� ‌theâ€� ‌challenge:â€� ‌Margaretâ€� Atwoodâ€� ´¥â€� ‌JGâ€� ‌Ballardâ€� ´¥â€� Cliveâ€� ‌Barkerâ€� ´¥â€� Christopherâ€� Buckleyâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Jim Butcher's Dresden Files | ‌Lee Child's Jack Reacher | ‌Philipâ€� ‌Kâ€� ‌Dickâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Ian Fleming | CS Forester's Horatio Hornblower | Williamâ€� ‌Gibsonâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Michelâ€� Houellebecqâ€� ´¥â€� Johnâ€� ‌Irvingâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Kazuoâ€� ‌Ishiguroâ€� ´¥â€� Shirleyâ€� Jacksonâ€� | ‌Johnâ€� ‌Leâ€� ‌Carreâ€� ´¥â€� Bernardâ€� ‌Malamudâ€� ´¥â€� Cormac McCarthy | Chinaâ€� ‌Mievilleâ€� ´¥â€� Toni Morrison | ‌VSâ€� Naipaulâ€� ´¥â€� Chuckâ€� ‌Palahniukâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Timâ€� ‌Powersâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Terryâ€� ‌Pratchett'sâ€� ‌Discworldâ€� ´¥â€� Philipâ€� ‌Rothâ€� ´¥â€� Nealâ€� Stephensonâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Jimâ€� ‌Thompsonâ€� ´¥â€� Johnâ€� ‌Updikeâ€� ´¥â€� Kurtâ€� ‌Vonnegutâ€� ´¥â€� Jeanette Winterson | PGâ€� ‌Wodehouseâ€� â€�

Finished: ‌Isaac� ‌Asimov's� �"Future History" (Robot/Empire/Foundation�)

2024 reads, #6. The last time I finished one of my annual summer reads of a Jack Reacher book, about six months ago with 2000's Running Blind (my review), I mentioned how that, if I could remember it six months later, I thought I'd also start reading a Reacher book once every winter as well, in that I'm currently 25 books behind in this long-running series (with more continuing to be published every year), and I've been having such an unexpectedly great time reading them that I didn't want to have to wait until all the way in my eighties to complete it. And hey, guess who indeed managed to remember all this six months later?

I say an "unexpectedly" great time because I honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy Lee Child's laconic literary creation nearly as much as I've ended up doing so; after all, I only started this series after making the decision a few years ago to embrace my inner child and once again participate in summer easy reading challenges like I used to as a kid through my public library, where the whole point is to burn through a bunch of books during the warm weather by specifically concentrating on "beach and airport reads," for lack of a better term. Along with choices like Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" series, the Horatio Hornblower novels of CS Forester, and Ian Fleming's original James Bond books, I thought it'd be cheesy and fun to add these perennial occupants of the library's "new release" shelf, an annual series of crime thrillers centered around the most kickass American who's ever Americaned America, the always drifting, forever rule-breaking, increasingly "damn" muttering former military crime investigator Jack Reacher, who eternally roams the American countryside and is constantly getting caught up in other people's dramas against his will, because he's just too good a guy to turn a blind eye to injustice, damnit.

Of course, this has been the problem with the Reacher books too; actually created by a British Americanophile named James Grant who writes under the pen name Lee Child, Reacher is the literal manifestation of every childhood fantasy about the U S of A he ever had as a child, and the first couple books of this series unfortunately reflects that rather literally, presenting a cartoon superhero who blows into outrageously trope-filled small American towns once per book, to be confronted by a series of the most cardboard cutout stereotypes this side of the Nickelodeon Central Casting office. Thankfully, once Child actually moved to America himself in the late '90s, and had a chance to spend several years here actually getting to know the country as a local, he then put out the big breakthrough book for this series, third volume Tripwire from 1999 (my review); and that's when Reacher finally became a real person living in the same real world you and I live in, Child getting rid of the all the eye-rolling moments of the first two books to instead show us that he really knows what he's doing as a writer of crime thrillers, giving us a fast and mean genre exercise that delights in a way that needs no Roger Marin asterisk.

That's why I was so wary and disappointed at first with today's novel, book #5 from 2001, because it looks at first like a return to the outrageously awful small-town antics of pre-American Child, as our hero ends up in southern Texas and trying to help an abused Mexican-American wife against a group of surly, drooling good ol' boys who might as well be hooking their thumbs into the suspenders of their white suits while boasting about the latest local lynching. But without revealing spoilers, about halfway through this book one of these cardboard cutouts is revealed to be almost the exact opposite kind of person than the one painted with the giant brush by Lee in the first half, a real Gone Girl kind of moment where literally the entire plot of the story flips upside-down by the revelation and suddenly starts going in directions you would've never guessed beforehand it would.

That was exciting and great, a moment of flipping my expectations just like Child did in the previous book in this series, using these later Reacher books partly as a way of commenting on the implausibility of the early Reacher books, to deliberately play with conventions and expectations so to deliver a novel that gives you all the thrills you want from an airport crime quickie, but always in a smart and original way that doesn't take its audience for granted. That's why I call Reacher books an unexpectedly great time, because I wasn't expecting any of these kinds of things when I first started this series several years ago; and I think it's fair to say that it's the continued success of these books in my eyes that's partly led me to become a bigger fan in general here in my fifties of genre fiction, embracing categories like crime, fantasy and romance* in a way I simply didn't when I was younger, and getting rid of most of the precious NPR Brooklyn indie-lit character dramas I used to read when younger to make room for all these new genre titles.

[*Well, okay, maybe I wouldn't be reading the romance ones if it wasn't for the fact that I get hired regularly now to edit such books, so read them professionally because I want to keep on top of the latest trends in this genre. But still!]

I'm reserving moral judgment on all that, and am simply chalking it up these days to changing interests as I get older and my interests just change in general; but as far as that stuff's concerned, the Reacher novels have been a real highlight of the last several years of my reading life, and I recommend anyone looking for a really cracking actioner to pick any of these up (as long as you stick to volume #3 and later, that is). I look forward to my next Reacher read, 2002's Without Fail (OMFG, he saves the freaking Vice President), coming this summer, so I hope you'll have a chance to come by and join me again then.

Lee Child "Jack Reacher" books being reviewed for this series: Killing Floor (1997) | Die Trying (1998) | Tripwire (1999) | Running Blind (2000) | Echo Burning (2001) | Without Fail (2002) | Persuader (2003) | The Enemy (2004) | One Shot (2005) | The Hard Way (2006) | Bad Luck and Trouble (2007) | Nothing to Lose (2008) | Gone Tomorrow (2009) | 61 Hours (2010) | Worth Dying For (2010) | The Affair (2011) | A Wanted Man (2012) | Never Go Back (2013) | Personal (2014) | Make Me (2015) | Night School (2016) | The Midnight Line (2017) | Past Tense (2018) | Blue Moon (2019) | The Sentinel (2020) | Better Off Dead (2021) | No Plan B (2022) | The Secret (2023) | In Too Deep (2024)