The Affair by Lee Child
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This is a difficult book to like. A collection of universally-unlikeable characters, engaged in a circle of clumsy lies, beatings and general bastardry, revolving around a plot that asks the reader to care about the outcome of a "Who's the biggest shit" contest, and all driven by a protagonist so unbelievable and one-dimensional that I struggle to believe that this is the 16th book in the series. Childs' style is distinctly limited, and the reader receives no insight into why anybody-- least of all his sociopathic ubermensch lead, Jack Reacher-- sees fit to follow their lines of action. It's somewhere at the level of the old 'Destroyer' or 'Executioner' potboilers, and I'm at a loss to work out how this has become so popular. Perhaps it's the Rambo-esque appeal of a gun-toting, reactionary hard man for a country of similar tastes, but at least 'First Blood' was a decent book.
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