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Personal Hardcover – January 1, 2014

by Lee Child (Author)

18,279 ratings

Book 19 of 26: Jack Reacher

Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

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Language

English
Publisher

Delacorte Press
Publication date

January 1, 2014
Dimensions

6.38 x 1.38 x 9.45 inches
ISBN-10

0593073827
ISBN-13

978-0593073827
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Delacorte Press; 1st Edition (January 1, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593073827
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593073827
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.46 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.38 x 1.38 x 9.45 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #7,808,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
18,279 ratings

About the author

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Lee Child
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Lee Child is one of the world’s leading thriller writers. He was born in Coventry, raised in Birmingham, and now lives in New York. It is said one of his novels featuring his hero Jack Reacher is sold somewhere in the world every nine seconds. His books consistently achieve the number-one slot on bestseller lists around the world and have sold over one hundred million copies. Two blockbusting Jack Reacher movies have been made so far. He is the recipient of many awards, most recently Author of the Year at the 2019 British Book Awards. He was appointed CBE in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Photography © Sigrid Estrada
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Customer reviews

5 star		55%
4 star		23%
3 star		12%
2 star		6%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Could have been a 5-star

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2017

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A nice read. Fun. Real fun. A conclusive and satisfying ending for me.

Could have been a 5 star if the geography knowledge wasn't a bit illogical and the bad characters too politically correct. At first JR knows nothing about London, cannot find a 5-star hotel but suddenly he knows commuting time, down to the minute between different parts of London, while at the same time he doesn't know he has to pay for grocery bags in shops. JR and the author mix up their knowledge too much.**

The bad guys are white as usual and bad blacks are absent (except in real life UK prisons). The best girls are usually of color. The usual addicts, all three of them are pure white.

** [JR remembers] "We checked the map at the station and used the District Line, which had a stop at a place called St James’s Park, which sounded like it might be near some fancy places. Which it was. We came up into the night air and saw signs to Westminster Abbey in one direction and Buckingham Palace in the other. And there was a big hotel right across the street." ---- JR has no clue where he is.

** [JR speaking next day] "But London is big and traffic is slow and we’re all the way on the other side of town. They’ve got to get a little convoy together. That’s ten minutes, right there, even if they’re all on the ball. Then they’ll have to loop all the way north in a big wide circle, or come all the way through the centre of the city. The East End, Westminster, Paddington. Could be we have an hour." --- JR knows London's geography and commuting times by heart.

21 people found this helpful

Child has never been good at ballistics

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2014

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I am a Reacher fan. Every book from "Killing Floor" to "Worth Dying For" is on our bookshelf. I have read them all two or three times. The last few, though, only on Kindle, and after reading "Personal" it's time to call a halt. Lee Child hasn't written a decent book since he committed the dreadful faux pas of casting the pipsqueak Tom Cruise as the 6 foot 5 inch 250 pound Reacher in the movie version of "One Shot". Maybe he is suffering from terminal embarrassment.
The premise for this latest effort is only finally revealed on the last few pages, and you can't help but groan "Oooooh come on! Reeeeeeally?" While most Reacher books, and indeed most thrillers, require a leap of faith somewhere, this is just awful. For a start, the two - sniper scenario is lifted straight from Ian Fleming's very first James Bond book "Casino Royale".
Then there're the guns. Child has never been good at ballistics, but how hard would it be for him to do some fact checking? This is after all, a book about snipers. We are repeatedly told that a 50 cal. BMG bullet will take 3 seconds to travel 1,400 yards. But it doesn't. Bullet velocity is usually referred to in feet per second. For a bullet to take three seconds to travel 1,400 yards, it would have to average 1,400 feet per second for the whole distance. The trouble is that with a normal load, from a rifle such as Child describes, a ballistically efficient bullet would leave the muzzle at around 2,800 feet per second, and still be doing over 1,700 feet per second at 1,400 yards. That's an average of over 2,200 feet per second, and means the bullet would take just under two seconds to arrive. Splitting hairs? Not when Child goes into such repeated detail as central to the plot.
Still on guns, he writes in detail about testing various calibres on bullet proof glass. Among the cartridges he says were tested is the 7.62 mm NATO. He then goes on to say that the .308 Winchester specifically wasn't tested. They are for all intents the same cartridge; one is military, and the other is the commercial version. Can't he run this by someone before he goes into print?
Even more. In the climactic fight scene, Reacher and two sidekicks are confronted with an unarmed 6'11" man mountain "bigger than a gorilla". They are all carrying 9mm pistols, but are afraid to shoot him, not because they might miss, but because they think the bullets would go clean through him and kill some poor neighbour in their London suburban home. Damn! Looks like Reacher will just have to fight him hand to hand. Look, these are 9mm slugs shot at pretty low velocity, not some cannon. After penetrating that much flesh and bone, they're going nowhere. Just shoot him!
Then there's the mind numbing scene in the giant's house, where Reacher loses his perspective. It's just too awful. Regretfully, the only way I'll read a new Reacher now is if I know in advance that Reacher dies. It really is time for Child to kill him off. Until then, if I need a Reacher fix, I'll have to content myself with re-reading the old ones again.

104 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2021

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What happened to Jack Reacher. I've been reading Jack Reacher from the beginning & I for lack of interest struggled to finish this book. I HATED the name of the character Nice, it didn't fit. It made me think that Child struggled to find an appropriate female name for the character. Jack is getting older & the women are getting younger. In honesty, l like to give credit where credit is due for good writing but Lee Child you lost me on this read. The book didn't cut to the chase for me and the 20% good parts didn't make up for the 80% of wafting inbetween. The beginning dragged on and on, the ending was such a disappointment, the character Nice was forgettable & a put down on women in general. The relationship between Nice & Reacher was lame & felt disconnected in a strange way. The stuff about the Brits & M15 & M16 wasnt portrayed very well & unbelievable. Does Child not relise that his readers have a broad range of writers world wide. I think Jack Reacher needs to be reinvented to get me interested enough to continue reading this series.

4 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Mark Dyer

Adequate as entertainment

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 7, 2020

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I wasn't much impressed with this one as there was an accumulation of apparently small points that eventually added up to an overall feeling of inaccuracy. From the start, the means by which The Authorities got in touch with JR in the first place didn't quite ring true but I don't know much about the resources such places have so perhaps I'm wrong.

I was greatly amused by the middle third of the book, how a British author described events, places and so on within Greater London as if he were a foreigner (in this case American), over-explaining some things and making some mild mistakes; for example, I've never heard that Place of Learning being referred to as The University of Cambrige - it's always been Cambridge University to me although I have since seen it called that and perhaps I wasn't brung up proper.

It was nice. To see that. The narrative. Went through a phase. Where sentances were longer. Than Mr Child often writes. I noticed one sentance that went on for more than 25 words so all credit to him.

The fact that I noticed those descriptions and writing style indicates that I was not gripped by the story: as usual there was a significant amount of travelling around, beatings up, and so on. In that regard the book was like an episode of the original Star Trek; we knew where we were, where we were going to be and how it would end. After all, that's why we buy the books. The ending was all a bit sudden, leaving me with the impression of having consumed fast food and not haute cuisine.

6 people found this helpful

L. R.

Jack is BACK!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2015

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Oh, what a relief. Having read all of the Reacher books - some more than once - it is so good to have our Jack back again with 'Personal'.

The last 'decent' Reacher book was, IMO, Worth Dying For (no. 15). The others since then have left me feeling disappointed, and more than a little bereft. I missed my favourite action hero. But here he is, back again, large as life (pun intended).

I won't summarise the plot because other reviewers have done that. What I will say is that if you like your Reacher to be involved in fist fights, gun fights, and outwitting people with that oh-so-logical mind of his, then look no further.

I liked the location being moved (briefly to Paris, and then to London/Essex). I think the last time Reacher was in the UK was for The Hard Way, but that was a rural set-up, and it was good to see him in London (with some amusing, tongue-in-cheek observations about British peculiarities along the way). I know that the Reacher we know and love is the one doing his Littlest Hobo routine, moving from one US state to another, and those stories are still my favourites, but I don't think a change does any harm once in a while.

Living oop North, I don't know how realistic the Romford Boys are but really, does it matter? They made for a satisfying gang of baddies, especially 'Little' Joey who, at 6'11", is Reacher's largest adversary since (I think) the huge guy in Persuader. As someone who's never had any training in unarmed combat, nor often finds myself in situations I need to fight my way out of (thankfully), I always find the fight scenes fascinating. Lee Child is the only author I know who goes into such lengthy descriptions of a fight which only lasts for a couple of minutes maximum.

As regards the character of Casey Nice, I liked her. She was well fleshed-out and intriguing. She demonstrated that even CIA agents are human. Lee Child did a good job of keeping their relationship purely platonic/professional (the bit where Reacher has a right old perv at her arse notwithstanding). Nice is in her twenties, Reacher is in his fifties. A sexual relationship between them would have been gratuitous and inappropriate.

The reveal at the ending was a good'un - I didn't see it coming - and things were tied up nicely. All in all, a really satisfactory read. If you've not read a Reacher book before, you won't be disappointed. If you're a Reacher fan who feels he's gone off the boil of late, then take heart from him being back.

All we need now is for the next book to be Jack, on foot, righting wrongs in some dusty, sparsely-populated US state, smashing faces with his elbows and drinking gallons of coffee, for him to be right back on track. Yay!

22 people found this helpful

Baileys owner

Enjoyable read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 16, 2017

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Always think books are hard to review one persons excellent read could be another person's nightmare. Personally I enjoyed it. if you like reading about Jack Reacher then you will enjoy this book. The only thing that could spoil this story is by making it into a film staring Tom Cruise.

16 people found this helpful

Don P

The final twist beat me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 17, 2021

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Written as all these books are, full of details and twists in the story. As always it is necessary to read the detail but even then I didn't foresee the final twist. Just a couple of gripes. Lee Child, the author, clearly completes a lot of research in all his stories, however as a Londoner two points clearly strand out as being wrong. The District Line on the London Underground is described as a 'Tube' train together with it's restrictions however it is one of three lines that are 'Subway' type trains. The other point being from the end of the book, Reacher is taken 70 miles to RAF Honington whose runway is non operational to get an RAF plane. The obvious destination would have been RAF Northolt near to Heathrow where the VIP transports are based. Other than that another enjoyable book.

John Robson

Back on form

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 20, 2015

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I almost gave up on the Jack Reacher series of books around the time of "The Affair" and "A Wanted Man". I read both books and felt that Jim Grant (or Lee Child to use his pen name) was just going through the motions. "Never Go Back" was marginally better, but only just. Being at a loose end, with nothing on offer from any of my other usual authors, I took a punt on "Personal" and was delighted to see the author back on form.

This story gripped me from beginning to end and I hope this book marks a return to form for this series of novels. I don't understand why some people found it so different in feel or tone from the earlier books in the series - to me it was a return to the style of those early books. Yes, there are some implausible things going on (one of the main critiques of this book that I've seen) - but that has always been the case with Jack Reacher - at the climax of "Tripwire" (the 3rd book in the series, published all the way back in 1999) he survives an almost point-blank shot to the chest... so to criticise the implausibility of the plot devices in the newer novels seems odd to me. It's escapist fiction, and as such there will always be things which wouldn't be feasible in "the real world".

As for Reacher shunning his "lone drifter" status to work for the government, why is that getting so much flak? The character has done this on plenty of occasions before - "The Visitor" and "Without Fail" spring to mind. In short, I think most of the criticisms leveled at this book are unfair, and I enjoyed it immensely. It's not "great" literature, but it doesn't pretend to be - it's just a good escapist adventure yarn which will keep you entertained.

9 people found this helpful

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