Better Off Dead (Jack Reacher #26)
 

BETTER OFF DEAD | Kirkus Reviews

I like the Lee Child written Reacher books a lot more than the Andrew Child one's but this one is OK.

I could not finish The Sentinel.

I read the original two books and liked them.

What surprised me was when the movie was announced. I was thinking it would take some ex-wrestler or maybe a Hugh Jackman big guy to do the role. Instead, as we know, it was Tom Cruise.

The books focused often on how wide and tall he was and how that affected how people dealt (or chose not to deal) with him.

I thought it was a sellout to cast Cruise as Reacher.

I've read all the Reacher books up to the last two.

I can think of 2 fights in all the books where there was any doubt who was going to win. One was "Paulie" in Persuader.

Every other fight was utter domination by Reacher. I _liked_ this aspect for one very important reason. It meant that plots had to revolve around something else. No long and drawn out melee battle hinged the plot line. Reacher engaged, neutralized and moved on. It turns the plot into an "action mystery" instead of an action book.

Tom cruise however had who knows how many of these fights where he's getting bested by the bad guys, over and over but overcomes in the end. *meh*. Movie garbage.

Tom Cruise is quite a nice guy from what I heard. And Lee Child liked him in that role. The series coming up does have a much more physically imposing actor playing Jack Reacher.

I enjoyed the sentinel and will read Better of Dead when available at library.

Awesome series

Thought Tom Cruise was horrible miscasting

It's a shame that Lee Child decided to retire and hand the series off to his brother. That's all I'll say.

kathy

He did not retire. He is busy writing the television series Reacher.
Amazon’s ‘Reacher’ Series Officially Completes Filming [Exclusive] | Midgard Times

According to that article, the Reacher series was ordered by Amazon in Jan. 2020. The last Reacher book written by Lee Child alone was released in Oct. 2019. The first joint book was released in Oct. 2020. Based on the time it takes a book to go from the author's laptop to Amazon's warehouse, his brother was likely working on that first book before the series got the green light. Lee Child also gave interviews saying he had decided to retire from writing the books, that he and the brother would write a book or two together and then the brother would take over.

Based on the reviews of "Better Off Dead", Lee Child might want to rethink things. The book is rated 4 out of 5 stars but Amazon must use some hinky math since most of the reviews give it 1 or 2 stars. (I gave it two stars myself.) Some readers are begging Lee Child to kick his brother to the curb and take over.

k.

Lee Child does a much better job in the books just written by him as far as I can tell.

My wife and I thought the same thing, that Cruise wasn’t the image we had of Reacher.

BUT, Cruise produced the movie, so he got to pick who plays the star.