Blue Moon by Lee Child
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I went back and forth about a rating for this book. On the one hand, Lee Child's Blue Moon is well written and moves quickly, but on the other hand, I feel like he's out of ideas. This certainly isn't the first Reacher book that doesn't hold up to critical thinking. Just starting with the odds of one man, even a very perceptive one, always wandering into these major criminal happenings is enough to make the stories ridiculous.

Add to that the fact that whatever compunction Reacher had about killing seems to have disappeared, and it's really too much. Yes, Reacher always was very dangerous when provoked, but now it feels like the killing is what he wants. Not an "I kill if I have no choice" hero but a "come on, give me an excuse to kill" vigilante. There's a big difference. In this book, he even kills an unarmed man who, while repulsive in his actions, isn't a violent criminal. He just executes him. Is this where we've wound up?

I didn't go with one star, because, as I said at the start, it moves quickly and is well written. But I can't go more than two stars, because we've gone from a thoughtful righter of wrongs to the Terminator, set loose in unnamed towns where he magically stumbles upon huge organized crime syndicates that he, with the help of a few friends, is going to annihilate.

Maybe Lee Child needs to do some prequel work. Go back and let a younger Reacher be an MP officer again and investigate military crimes. At least that wouldn't be so far-fetched.


View all my reviews