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Books: Tripwire
Jul. 4th, 2011 07:01 pmMy friend has been loaning me the Lee Child series of Jack Reacher novels, and I just finished the third, Tripwire.
These are straight up action/thriller type novels. Not really mysteries, per se. They have two things going for them a) an absolutely pitch-perfect narrative voice for the sort of story they are, and b) narrative pacing that is so ferocious that it overwhelms me. I always have to skip to the end to see who lives before I can even handle the tension of the second and third acts. This despite knowing that there are, I dunno, 20 books in this series so *obviously* the protagonist lives as he's been in a whole nother shelf of these.
The thing that struck me most in Tripwire was how different air travel is now, in 2011, compared to when the book was published in 1999. I don't think you COULD get on a public flight in the continental US without photo ID now, as Reacher does in this book. Air travel often trips me up in novels - I remember reading a Harry Harrison book, one of the Stainless Steel Rat ones, and he's in an airport, or a spaceport, smoking. Not in a designated lounge or anything, just hanging out in the terminal. Our future - not how you thought it would be.
What I love the most about the Reacher books is how he calmly sets out the options in various situations and then analyzes them and then reacts to the changes. He reminds me of the narrative version of watching Vladimir Vasiliev clips on YouTube. (Vladimir Vasiliev is my personal imaginary fantasy action hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvF17Wd4Fz4.)
These are straight up action/thriller type novels. Not really mysteries, per se. They have two things going for them a) an absolutely pitch-perfect narrative voice for the sort of story they are, and b) narrative pacing that is so ferocious that it overwhelms me. I always have to skip to the end to see who lives before I can even handle the tension of the second and third acts. This despite knowing that there are, I dunno, 20 books in this series so *obviously* the protagonist lives as he's been in a whole nother shelf of these.
The thing that struck me most in Tripwire was how different air travel is now, in 2011, compared to when the book was published in 1999. I don't think you COULD get on a public flight in the continental US without photo ID now, as Reacher does in this book. Air travel often trips me up in novels - I remember reading a Harry Harrison book, one of the Stainless Steel Rat ones, and he's in an airport, or a spaceport, smoking. Not in a designated lounge or anything, just hanging out in the terminal. Our future - not how you thought it would be.
What I love the most about the Reacher books is how he calmly sets out the options in various situations and then analyzes them and then reacts to the changes. He reminds me of the narrative version of watching Vladimir Vasiliev clips on YouTube. (Vladimir Vasiliev is my personal imaginary fantasy action hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvF17Wd4Fz4.)
