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Jack Reacher #1-3

Lee Child Collection: Killing Floor, Die Trying, Tripwire

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KILLING FLOOR (Director: Michael Page) - "I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. I was in a booth, at a window, reading somebody's abandoned newspaper. Outside, the rain had stopped but the glass was still pebbled with bright drops. I saw the police cruisers pull into the gravel lot. They were moving fast and crunched to a stop. Light bars flashing and popping. Doors burst open, policemen jumped out. Two from each car, weapons ready. Two revolvers, two shotguns. This was heavy stuff. One revolver and one shotgun ran to the back. One of each rushed the door. I just sat and watched them. I knew who was in the diner. A cook in back. Two waitresses. Two old men. And me. This operation was for me. I had been in town less than half an hour." - From the opening of this searing tale of honor and revenge where Jack Reacher, a former military cop, hunts down his brother's killers.

DIE TRYING (Director: Michael Page) - In a Chicago suburb, a dentist is met in his office parking lot by three men and ordered into the trunk of his Lexus. On a downtown sidewalk, Jack Reacher and an unknown woman are abducted in broad daylight by two men - practiced and confident - who stop them at gunpoint and hustle them into the same sedan. Then Reacher and the woman are switched into a second vehicle and hauled away, leaving the dentist bound and gagged inside his car with the woman's abandoned possessions, two gallons of gasoline�and a burning match.

TRIPWIRE (Director: Laura Grafton, Engineer: Jeremy Spanos) - Jack Reacher is settling into lazy Key West when his life is interrupted by a stranger who comes looking for him. When the stranger turns up beaten to death in the Old Town cemetery - fingertips removed - Reacher knows whomever the man was working for is not a friend. Reacher follows the trail to New York.

Audio Cassette

First published August 28, 2002

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About the author

Lee Child

442 books34.4k followers
Lee Child was born October 29th, 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British TV's "golden age." During his tenure his company made Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of 40 as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars' worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series.

Killing Floor was an immediate success and launched the series which has grown in sales and impact with every new installment. The first Jack Reacher movie, based on the novel One Shot and starring Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike, was released in December 2012.

Lee has three homes—an apartment in Manhattan, a country house in the south of France, and whatever airplane cabin he happens to be in while traveling between the two. In the US he drives a supercharged Jaguar, which was built in Jaguar's Browns Lane plant, thirty yards from the hospital in which he was born.

Lee spends his spare time reading, listening to music, and watching the Yankees, Aston Villa, or Marseilles soccer. He is married with a grown-up daughter. He is tall and slim, despite an appalling diet and a refusal to exercise.

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5 stars
339 (51%)
4 stars
217 (32%)
3 stars
77 (11%)
2 stars
19 (2%)
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7 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
Profile Image for Razvan Banciu.
1,909 reviews159 followers
February 2, 2023
Excelent book, one of the best in recent times, there were five deserved stars until the last thirty pages.
The plot is interesting, the action is allert and twisted, characters are strong, Reacher is a likeable person, although he puts quite a small price on human lives. Above all, it's the style I've liked, more than the written facts. Unfortunatelly, last pages seem childish: the awkward highway shooting (with Picard staying alive?!? despite been shot with a powerful gun), the assault on the police station and the apocalyptic final scene "on fire".
4 reviews
January 11, 2009
I don't want to spoil this for other readers. I'll just say that I am currently reading the series as a friend of mine has them all and is lending them to me. Reacher is ex-military and trouble finds him wherever he goes. He uses his military expertise and contacts to solve each mystery. I've been told by ex-military people that the author is very authentic. Also, Child has his character all over the U.S., the geographics of his novels is rich. All of which amazes me given that the author is originally from the British Isles.
Profile Image for Siobhan.
5,037 reviews596 followers
October 20, 2015
The Jack Reacher books are far from being the greatest literature on the planet, but they work well as guilty pleasures.

I admit, I have more than a couple of issues with the writing yet the stories are always entertaining and always make up for it. They are the kinds of books I have no wish to admitting I enjoy, yet I cannot deny the fact that I do enjoy the Jack Reacher novels.
Profile Image for Alexander Theofanidis.
2,267 reviews132 followers
May 21, 2025
1. Killing Floor ⭐⭐⭐

Jack Reacher is a hard man. One might liken him to a literate Rambo — not only adept at neutralising five or six henchmen simultaneously (with, one imagines, a minimum of fuss), but also fully capable of calculating what two plus two equals, sans perspiration. Whether he is conversant in differential calculus remains an open question, but let us not be unreasonable in our expectations.

Reacher belongs to that peculiar literary dinosaur bestowed upon us by bygone decades — eras in which physical confrontation was not a last resort, but the default method of conflict resolution. In this respect, the novel functions adequately. Our titular hero arrives in a small town for no other reason than that he happened to glance at his fellow passenger’s map while on a bus, recalled that a blind African-American guitarist had died there many decades prior (yes, you read that correctly), and decided, on a whim, to alight.

By the very next day, he finds himself arrested as a suspect in a murder investigation. Before he can properly process what’s happening, he’s entangled neck-deep in a conspiracy of suitably murky proportions. Reacting in the only fashion permitted by the robust masculinity of the era from which he has seemingly been exhumed, Reacher proceeds to wreak havoc — an understatement of magnificent proportions. One might go so far as to say that everything except the Earth’s core receives a thorough beating at his hands.

Eventually — SPOILER ALERT — it emerges that the murder he was accused of relates to the death of his own brother, a development of which he was entirely unaware. He hadn’t seen his brother in years, nor had any inkling that he had passed through the town in question.

In due course, Reacher resolves the case, eliminates all nefarious elements with characteristic efficiency, parts ways with the stunningly attractive police officer he had, of course, seduced through the sheer force of his manliness, and departs in pursuit of further adventures (one suspects they will be similarly bruising for all involved).



2. Die Trying ⭐⭐


Jack Reacher is such a paragon of masculinity that ingesting his perspiration will result in immediate chest hair growth — whether one happens to be a man, a woman, a child, a dolphin, a goldfish, or indeed an extraterrestrial lifeform.

Jack Reacher is so ineffably manly that simply beholding him causes immediate moisture between the legs, even if one is wrestling legend Hulk Hogan himself.

The bogeyman, when retiring to bed, tucks his head beneath the covers — for fear of Jack Reacher.

Such is Reacher’s prowess with firearms that he can, with his back turned and armed with an extraordinarily powerful weapon, fire a bullet that circumnavigates the globe and strikes you precisely in both testicles.

Reacher harbours a dream: that one day, every Jewish dentist might react to the theft of his car without subsequently being discovered charred to a crisp in the vehicle’s boot. (Read the book; it will all become clear.)

Jack Reacher is the ultimate operative: he breakfasts on Jason Bourne, lunches on James Bond, and by supper belches up a Rambo-Schwarzenegger hybrid. And yet... he is unemployed.

For reasons one can only attribute to fate’s perverse sense of humour, every time Reacher meanders peacefully through the American heartland, a deranged conspiracy rears its head. Said conspirators inevitably commit the fatal error of confronting him physically — often via a few backhanded slaps. A choice that proves, without exception, to be terminal.

Because after an initial moment of non-bewilderment — Jack Reacher, of course, never suffers from confusion — he calmly assesses the situation (to such detail that he might deduce the number of cows once owned by the grandmother of the kidnappers’ driver based solely on the limp of the deputy commander), grows incensed, and retaliates. Viciously. He returns to the conspirators their teeth to chew on and blow bubbles with.

Despite initially failing to realise that a very-much-alive (though not for long) dentist is bound and gagged in the boot of the car used to abduct him and an FBI agent with a mangled knee, Reacher’s heightened senses soon kick in. What follows is a transformation of the landscape into a kind of Yucatán-post-meteor-impact, Krakatoa-post-eruption, Greek-economy-post-2009 scenario. You grasp the gist.

In this particular tale, a handful of dangerously delusional imbeciles have decided to secede from the United States and establish a new, independent nation — somewhere in Montana (not Hannah). They’ve set up a “colony” of some hundred individuals (including women and children), and claim readiness for any contingency. Or, rather, some contingencies — for one cannot go far with fifty indifferent followers, even if armed with scavenged rifles, ill-gotten cash, and delusions drawn from pseudo-constitutional reinterpretations and conspiracy websites involving the UN, the World Bank, and some vaguely Illuminati-adjacent bogey.

Their leaders are, naturally, either profoundly unhinged or have undergone elective cranial surgery in which their brains were replaced with strawberry jelly. And, naturally, they blunder fatally by targeting Jack Reacher.

SPOILER ALERT: The ending is, of course, foreordained. Reacher fires bullets through skulls from ten light-years away while dangling from helicopters, demolishes pickup trucks with dynamite, and puts a definitive end to the budding micro-republic.

One lingering mystery: why do these laughable separatists consider the goddaughter of the President of the United States so vitally important? I confess I never understood. Should someone be able to elucidate, I shall doff my hat — and allow Jack Reacher to shoot a hole clean through it from six kilometres away, blindfolded.

Overall, the novel is not entirely dreadful. The first half — before the plot begins to unravel in all its overstretched absurdity — is, arguably, quite engaging. Later, it starts to drag. But if your tastes lean towards action-driven testosterone escapism, replete with meticulous gun descriptions, bullet calibres, and rugged lone-wolf logic, you will likely find it satisfying.

If, on the other hand, your brain weighs more than 600 grams, perhaps... not so much.



3. Tripwire ⭐⭐


Jack Reacher consumes a tanker of water per day—upon the casual suggestion, mind you, of a diminutive Belgian gentleman. When asked if he is Jack Reacher, he invariably says no. Shortly thereafter, the inquirer ends up dead, fingerprintless, and Jack, in a fleeting moment of remorse, realises: a new adventure must begin. And when a Reacher adventure begins, many will suffer, bleat, groan, whinny, and die—all in the sacred name of Truth.

The narrative kicks off in New York City, back when the World Trade Center still stood (though, as we are ominously reminded, not for much longer). The Internet is a joke—mere dial-up—and social media is not even a glimmer in the post-coital eye of Mark Zuckerberg’s milkman. Thus, the only path to justice is through gunfire, fists, open wounds, and the sacred exudate of Jack Reacher’s pores.

Enter the daughter of his late mentor. They haven’t seen each other in fifteen years—since she was, let’s say, a blossoming adolescent whose hormonal presence Reacher found not untroubling. But he, a paragon of restraint, refrained, both because she was underage and because her father outranked him. Now, of course, she’s a ravishing divorcée—evidently the baseline requirement for any woman granted dialogue in this universe—and, naturally, burning with suppressed longing. Such longing, in fact, that her undergarments ricochet off the ceiling and return days later like boomerangs of lust.

And so, Reacher accepts employment. The plot thickens. The antagonist? A villain apparently borrowed from a 1970s comic book: burned visage, and—no, you’re not hallucinating—a literal hook for a hand. Not a prosthesis, not a multi-tool with corkscrew and USB charger. A hook. A full-on Captain Hook situation, minus the crocodile. Notably absent from the narrative, however, are explanations of how said villain manages to dress, tie shoelaces, fasten a tie, perform post-micturition hygiene, or scratch his left ear.

As for Jack Reacher, it bears repeating: he is so hard that he can dislocate your shoulder, knock you unconscious, and purchase your firearm and your luxury SUV for a dollar. Should you object, you’re either unconscious or have just soiled yourself so thoroughly that your boxer briefs now resemble a zoning map for a football stadium.

Curiously, Lee Child has a recurring fascination with voltaic arc lamps. They appear frequently. They matter not at all. Should this detail confound you, consult Wikipedia swiftly—before Reacher exhales upon you and you develop facial hair via osmosis.

And let us not forget: in the Reacherverse, every door may be opened simply by knocking and declaring “mail delivery.” This works not once, not twice, but thrice—even when the person on the other side is a gun-toting, paranoia-ridden gangster. One is not demanding these characters possess doctorates in logical reasoning, but honestly.

The plot proceeds with all the elegance of a second-tier thriller. Romance ensues. Lee Child experiences what can only be described as a Nora Roberts episode. Reacher and the aforementioned goddess engage in candlelit dinners, romantic hotels, and beverages delivered in an authentic French carafe. One must bleach the soul just to forget having read it. For dessert? Raspberry sorbet, of course—though one suspects Reacher would more willingly consume the sorbetière itself.

Reacher’s clenched muscles twitch with the desire to punch someone, anyone, but alas: he must board a first-class flight with champagne. Perhaps Child is also experiencing a Harold Robbins moment.

Eventually, the haze of soft lighting and high-thread-count linens dissipates. The plot resumes. There are twists (which you saw coming from… the previous novel), gunfire ensues, and the dead are vindicated.

Two things remain etched in the mind: (1) Americans’ pathological tendency to salute everything in sight, even as civilians, and (2) a nail embedded in Jack Reacher’s skull is not a hindrance to action. It is barely an inconvenience. It is, if anything, an additional phallic symbol adorning the Reacherian physique as he annihilates evil.
All in all, a delightful beach read—specifically, the kind of beach you are sent to for cognitive rehabilitation after reading the previous Reacher installment.
Profile Image for Kay.
717 reviews
May 27, 2013
I am definitely a Lee Child addict. I just finished reading Tripwire and it was great. I started out reading some of his newer Jack Reacher books and decided I needed to go back to the beginning. It has given me a much better understanding of Jack Reacher's back ground. This one had lots of twists and turns and even though somewhere along the story I thought I had it figured out (and I did) it wasn't until close to the end I was positive.
Profile Image for Erin.
67 reviews
August 5, 2009
I have become a Lee Child addict. His character Jack Reacher has the answer to every situation in life. If I'm ever kidnapped, I know what to do. I know to use my elbow, not my hand if hitting someone in the head. Fantasies aside, Child is a writer so totally in command of details and structure that he deserves to be in the Literature section at Barnes and Noble, as opposed to Mystery.
Profile Image for Margaret.
68 reviews
September 27, 2008
A book to take with you on a vacation - a THRILLER - MYSERTY, INTRIGUE - WELL WRITTEN. There is a whole series of them - don't have to read in order. We trade them around in our Family. YOU WILL BE HOOKED!
Profile Image for Robin.
33 reviews1 follower
Read
January 13, 2009
all the boks are thrilling and you will love Reacher
Profile Image for Detlef.
332 reviews4 followers
February 6, 2022
Rezension zu "Größenwahn"

Dieser Roman erschien vor kurzem in einer Sonderausgabe der Bild am Sonntag. Die deutsche Erstausgabe dieses Jack-Reacher-Romans erschien 1998 bei Heyne. Angesichts der demnächst erscheinenden TV-Serie mit Jack Reacher schien es mir angebracht, diesen Thriller von Lee Child zu lesen.

Es geschieht in Margrave, einem kleinen Städtchen in Georgia. Dies ist ein sauberes Örtchen, wie man sich solch ein Örtchen im Süden der USA nur vorstellen kann. Reacher war mit dem Greyhound-Bus aus Tampa in den frühen Morgenstunden eingetroffen. Er war die Nacht unterwegs und marschierte nun in den Diner, um zu frühstücken. Reacher hat noch nicht zu Ende gefrühstückt, da wird er von zwei Polizisten festgenommen.

Es ist Freitagfrüh und um Mitternacht war in diesem sauberen Margrave ein Mann getötet worden. Der Polizeichef höchstselbst behauptet, Reacher in der Nacht am Tatort gesehen zu haben. Den beiden Cops bleibt nichts anderes übrig, als Reacher in die Zelle zu sperren.

Die Figur des herumstreunende Ex-Soldaten ist von Lee Child offenbar auf lange Sicht angelegt. Das Bild vom Diner und Jack Reachers Festnahme ist noch aus den Verfilmungen mit Tom Cruise bekannt. Wer, wenn nicht Jack Reacher, wird in einem Diner festgenommen?

Spannung wird man hier in diesem Roman nicht vermissen. Action genausowenig. Es bleibt nicht bei einem Toten und es gibt bestialisch hingerichtete Opfer. Die Passage sind nichts für Leser mit schwachen Nerven.

Neben Jack Reacher gibt es aber auch noch weitere Figuren, die den Lesern ans Herz wachsen können. Doch man sollte sich nicht immer gleich einlullen lassen von Lee Child, dem gebürtigen Briten.

Ein Roman der Spitzenklasse, der meine Lust auf die Serie noch mehr anheizte.

© Detlef Knut, Düsseldorf 2022
Profile Image for Melenia.
2,731 reviews6 followers
January 12, 2018
#1 -- Reread June 2017 (audio book) -- I love the Jack Reacher books! So much so that I'm reading them again lol. I so enjoy listening to the audio for this series and love that they use the same voice actor (Dick Hill) for all of the books thus far. I enjoyed most things about this book and the one or two things I didn't were easily overlooked. So much o that at the moment I can't remember what they are. I remember thinking during the last disc 'why didn't he just do this?' but I can't remember now what I wanted him to do, so I qualify that as a keeper. :)
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#1 -- July 2014 (hard copy) -- Good book.

#2 -- Pretty good.

#3 -- Aug/Sept 2017 -- Audio by Dick Hill -- I enjoyed this reread; however, I am starting to pick out inconsistencies in the series and that is slightly bothering me. Also the heavy abuse in this book bothers me quite a bit as well and that is why it only gets four stars.

#3 -- Dec 2015 -- Enjoyable read
95 reviews1 follower
May 25, 2019
I am glad I discovered the Jack Reacher series.
I tried the first book after seeing it on a friends bookshelf. Who doesn't check out their friends bookshelves? =)
I was hooked on this series from the start.
I love these stories. Good action, solving mysteries, and jokes thrown in here in there.
I just finished book #23 Past Tense. Waiting for the next book to come out. . .
20 reviews
August 1, 2023
Read this at the recommendation of my husband. Actually enjoyed it. Lots of action, of course, some killing (its in the title), overall a good read with an exciting plot line. Would recommend to those action fans out there!
Profile Image for Jennifer.
562 reviews2 followers
November 9, 2022
Really excellent noir-style detective novels, would read more.
Profile Image for Carla Brown.
3 reviews
July 5, 2025
This book was amazing! Can’t wait until the second one becomes available from the library. I plan to read the whole series if the rest of the books are as good as this one!
Profile Image for Eric Shaffer.
Author 17 books43 followers
January 30, 2014
In his early novels, Lee Child lets Jack Reacher show a little more emotion and be a little more vulnerable, and I found that as admirable as the near-Terminator-endurance of the later Jack Reacher. These three are shorter, and I would prefer the action more filled out, as it is in the later novels, but they are still entertaining, and for those want the whole arc of Jack Reacherdom, these books are well worth the read--or the listen, which, since Dick Hill is reading, I highly recommend. Enjoy.
Profile Image for Annabelle.
382 reviews13 followers
March 22, 2014
Here we go again. Reacher gets off at a bus stop by a town in the south, because his brother mentioned a blues guitarist there. It is a creepy Stepford town, everything clean. Soon Reacher is being set up for a murder, and then another body turns out to be his brother, a higher up in the Treasury Department who is looking at a counterfeit scam. Reacher has a great love affair with a detective, Roscoe, which was well done. But it drags, and there are ridiculous plot contrivances. But, hey, we all like Reacher.


Profile Image for Lance.
255 reviews2 followers
January 11, 2014
these were ok. i had them as audio books, and the stories were very different. i have read many lee child/reacher books and really do like his stuff. i think it gets better and better. i read a comment that if the reviewer were ever kidknapped, jack reacher has taught what to do. funny. this is a series that has dramatically improved. i recomment 63 hours and the affair. 63 hours is part of a mini grouping..very nice.
Profile Image for Jim.
204 reviews6 followers
February 19, 2008
"Jack Reacher discovers the daughter of his best military commander and a disfigured Vietnam vet who stole an identity and lived a life of crime in NYC, assisted by his hook hand."
Profile Image for Rita.
5 reviews
July 5, 2014
This is a set of several of his great titles. I love his Jack Reacher main character, who is nothing like the Tom Cruise portrayal, and style of writing.
Profile Image for Sandi Mann.
325 reviews2 followers
Read
March 13, 2017
ho hum! didn't like it at all. doesn't compare favourably with Harlan Coben!

2nd time reading this - I was desperate for something to read!
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