Listened to: "The Hard Way" by Lee Child

Listened to: The Hard Way by Lee Child, downloaded from Overdrive.com.

Pretty good. Child writes about the main character, Jack Reacher, as living a really violent life. But, Reacher is not a particularly scary dude. Reacher is always the good guy; he can be ruthless and his size and personality are intimidating but he's not a scary character to the reader.

This took a while for me to to finish between walking to and from work and exercising. There were several parts about the plot that did not compute. Reacher gets hired by a mercenary, Lane, in New York to help find the mercenary's kidnapped wife. But, Lane is hiring Reacher right off the street. I suppose desperation and stupidity play into Lane's decision but I thought that was far fetched.

There were several points iin the first half of the novel where I was mightily impressed with Child's plotting. He kept things moving and kept me guessing. I thought I knew exactly what was going on but Child switched things around convincingly. Toward the end I could figure out a major plot point but Child had set-up the surprise very well. I was not surprised simply because I figured Child would logically explain it using clues provided earlier. He did.

I wonder if Child has a grudge or dislike for special operations/special forces soldiers. I've read two of his books, this one and The Enemy, and both feature SF guys as bad guys and not the super-soldiers they are usually portrayed as in both fiction and non-fiction.