{"id":2322,"date":"2014-07-23T07:02:08","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T11:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2322"},"modified":"2014-08-01T07:08:40","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T11:08:40","slug":"the-killing-floor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2322","title":{"rendered":"***The Killing Floor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Greyhound<\/a>

(photo: wikimedia.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Lee Child (narrated by Dick Hill) \u2013 This is the first Jack Reacher<\/a> novel (1997), and the first I\u2019ve read. They\u2019re so popular, fans must either get past the flimsy logic behind Reacher\u2019s choice to become a Greyhound-riding drifter or Child at some point strengthens that case. Like Jo Nesbo\u2019s first Harry Hole novel (reviewed here<\/a>), you know from the get-go that Reacher\u2019s woman will be an endangered species before the plot runs out.<\/p>\n

Maybe male writers just have to get that damsel-in-distress-rescue-fantasy-thing out of their system, but I wish they would. It\u2019s too transparent an attempt to give their protagonists some depth via a meaningful, but brief relationship with really good sex. These relationships have to be short, though, so they don\u2019t spill over into sequels and doing the laundry, picking up the kids, and the other minutia that would inevitably follow if the relationship continued.<\/p>\n

The plot had a pretty big \u201chuh?\u201d in it, too, though I quite liked the image of homeless Jack Reacher tooling around the Georgia countryside in the borrowed Bentleys. (Spoiler alert:<\/em> The \u201chuh\u201d was, if the Margrave powers-that-be hired detective Finlay because they mistakenly thought he was slow-witted\u2014because of what Finlay says was the worst job interview in history\u2014wouldn\u2019t their FBI agent confederate, who knows Finlay, have set them straight?) Superb narration by Dick Hill!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lee Child (narrated by Dick Hill) \u2013 This is the first Jack Reacher novel (1997), and the first I\u2019ve read. They\u2019re so popular, fans must either get past the flimsy logic behind Reacher\u2019s choice to become a Greyhound-riding drifter … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"***The Killing Floor - Lee Childs's first Jack Reacher novel","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[77,61,52,54,40,126,66],"tags":[412,30,89],"class_list":["post-2322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-character","category-crime","category-detective","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-suspense","tag-mystery","tag-novel","tag-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-Bs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2323,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322\/revisions\/2323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}