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310 of 349 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Rare miss for Child, June 9, 2008
Disappointing. After reeling off 11 good to (often) great Reacher novels, Lee Child struck out with this one. It starts promising enough. Despair had all the makings of a great stage for Reacher to be Reacher, reminiscent of the Killing Floor. But the promise is never fulfilled. The meandering plot doesn't pull you in. Unlike previous stories, the villain is flat, two dimensional and far from frightening - a death sentence for any story of good vs. evil. The action is sparse.
Previous Reacher novels were impossible to put down. You were torn between your desire to get to the end and your hope that the story would keep going. After all, it would be another year before you got the next one. Sadly, that was not true here. The ending seemed slapped on, left lots of loose ends untied and seemed very uncharacteristic for Reacher. But worst of all, it didn't come too soon. It could have come 100 pages sooner.
These were the big problems with the book. Reacher's detour into politics and criticism of the war did seem out of character but not because I had any assumptions about his politics. He always struck me as outside of politics - outside of almost everything for that matter.
Lee, everyone is entitled to a miss, especially after the roll you have been on. Here is hoping the next one is back to your old form
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107 of 121 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Shockingly pedestrian, June 28, 2008
After reading about 8 of Child's Jack Reacher books, I finally found a dud. It started out thrilling, as expected, but quickly become almost boring. I can not believe I am typing those words.
Reacher's repeatedly doing the same thing, over and over (returning to a bad place) was tedious and so unlike our hero's usual behavior. The plot wandered all over the place and the book was too long.
I found it impossible to buy into the far-fetched "conspiracy theory" with its pathetic "villains" and was surprised at Child's foray into political opinion (putting his opinions into Reacher's mouth -which completely changed Reacher's character). This was totally out of place, I thought, and awkward at best.
I just hope that Child has not run out of stories and that he will return Reacher to his previous inventive adventures.
I only read the Amazon reviews after finishing the book, and must say I am not surprised that there are 110 reviews and the average is an abyssmal 2.5 stars. Most of his other books have averaged 4 stars.
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112 of 135 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Everything to Lose, Lee, June 7, 2008
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.
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