Book Review – The Midnight Line : Lee Child
Rating – 3.5 out of 5
Plot Summary – The Midnight Line
The much-awaited annual Jack Reacher installment is out and I, being a die-hard fan, could hardly wait to lay my hands on it and zip through it!
Alas it turned out to be a bit disappointing. It is all trademark Reacher, staccato conversations, nippy pace and settings of semi-rural America but somehow the zip is missing. The premise of the story – the neglected war veterans, abuse of prescription medicines and Lee Child’s penchant for germinating a story out of a minuscule thread are exciting for readers but I somehow felt he’s off the boil here.
And every time I read a Reacher novel, I rail at the casting director of the movies for having cast Tom Cruise as the 250 pound, 6′.5″ hulk!! Dwayne Johnson or John Cena would have been much better fits…
But I digress, Reacher here stumbles upon a West Point class ring in a pawn shop, out in a back of beyond town in Wisconsin. He can’t let go without locating the ring’s owner and returning it back.He realizes that no West Point ring owner would willingly part with his/her ring and he has to know why.
And there goes the starting premise of the novel. Reacher’s inquisitiveness takes him from Wisconsin to Wyoming. He traces the ring from where it was pawned and stolen and fenced! The original owner of the ring is far beyond the journey that the ring has made. The story unravels thereafter but I felt it stumble at some points where it got a little tenuous and dragged a bit.
Reacher is the battering ram that goes through the biker gangs, opoid smugglers and other assorted criminals in his quest for the ring’s owner and in typical fashion, he does get where he wants to leaving destruction in his wake! Let nobody come in his way when Reacher is on a mission.
I won’t drag the review any more, but suffice it to say that it’s a good short read if the only better option that you have at the time is a grocery list!!
