Worth Dying For

Worth Dying For
Lee Child
Delacorte Press
400 pgs.




I'll Be Honest...




I can't get enough of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. I freely admit that it's a guilty pleasure, and honestly I don't care who sees me reading it. Shakespeare? Poe? Dickens? Angelou? None of these authors can entertain me on the level that Lee Child does!! Worth Dying For is the latest novel written by Child, following his quota of about a book a year, which when you think about it is quite phenomenal production. It's just such a great series!! Imagine reading how Reacher kicks through a steel door to incapacitate the bad guy, and either rescue the kid or townspeople. And you, sitting there, riveted; reading how this man is able to make the world tremble by flexing and there you are cheering out loud as you sit there in your pjs, surrounded by empty Mountain Dew cans and little bits of Cheetos scattered everywhere.

Jack Reacher, the star of Child's series, is a 6'5, 250 pound ex-MP who travels the United States (mostly on foot) running into situation after situation. He grew up on military bases his entire life until his early 30s when, after realizing the military was going to continue shrinking with the end of the Cold War, he retired and decided to set off and see his home country. He has his own brand of justice, but it's not the wrong kind of justice. How can it be? He's the personification of the country itself, or at least the image that the country has of itself. He's big...huge in fact. He's strong...almost superhumanly strong. He's just shy of being something that burst out of a comic book, and gosh darnit he's not just strong but also smart!! How great is this?! He not only beats up the bad guys, but he solves crimes that are sometimes over 20 years old. What I think is the best part is this "realistic" walking, talking, smacking, smooching giant that either is a perfect representation of the country or a perfect parody of it is written by an Englishman. Go figure

Starting to see why this is a guilty pleasure? But the fact is that the Jack Reacher series are well written (well, decently written for this type of book. The first one, The Killing Floor, won an award but that's as close as this series is going to get to being seen as a literary treasure). In Worth Dying For, Reacher finds himself in the middle of Nebraska. Not only that, but he's stuck in a small town under feudal rule of the Duncan family who employs former college football players as the muscle. Oh, and Reacher is hurt/injured from the previous novel, 61 Hours. Oh, and there are more guys on the way from Vegas, hired mob enforcers, that are going to join the party. Will he make it?? Bwahahahaha! *gasp* *gasp* Haaahahaha...

So to be honest, I still love the Reacher series by Child. Child's writing is fluid, he keeps the tension and action and mystery jacked up so it forces you to read "just 1 more page." I'm someone that has a "fun" read list and a "classics" list, and Lee Child's Jack Reacher series knocked off the John Sandford "Prey" series as the most fun. Worth Dying For is not the best one of the series (personally, I feel that belongs to either One Shot or The Hard Way), but it's not bad. Each book is about 400 pages but it shouldn't take you more than a couple days to read. Also, while it is a series, you definitely do not have to read it in order. I didn't, and I don't think I missed out much. Now and then books will reference previous ones in the series, but with a series like this you know how each will end. So if after reading a Reacher novel you find yourself pumped with testosterone, strapping on your boots, and going out to hitchhike and cross the country, please, pretty please go and read a Jane Austen to bring you back down. The world can't handle two Reachers.

Worth Dying For