Meet Jack Reacher.

I  found these books.  I love it when I find a good writer who has written a whole series of books.  (Of course, my favorite writer ever is Harper Lee, and she only wrote one book—but she only needed to write one.)  It doesn’t happen often at this point, because I read a lot.  It often seems like I’ve already read all my favorites—and sometimes more than once.

Just recently, however, I came upon Lee Child and his Reacher series.  You wouldn’t have thought I’d like them.   I tend to prefer the genteel English murder mystery to machismo and militarism.  Violence doesn’t appeal to me.

But I had these books.

So, I checked them out.

I’m big on first lines.  In my experience, a good first line is a good first step.  It usually means the writer knows how to put words together.  She knows how to get your attention.  Chances are she will be able to keep it.  (It doesn’t always work.  The very best first line I ever read came in a book I could not finish.  Just couldn’t get to the end of it.  And I finish almost every book I start.  That one was very disappointing.)

There are great first lines, and there are first lines that are just okay.  I’m thinking the first line of the first Reacher novel was sort of in between.  Averagely good.  Which is to say, above average.  Enough to set up that question in your mind:  Why?  And what’s going to happen next?

So, I kept reading. All the way through the next 15 novels.

The plots are surprisingly complex—with new twists.  Not the same old action-adventure stuff at all.

The writing is good.  There’s a voice there, a command of language, some psychological insight.

I know, for sure, that I would not like Jack Reacher if I met him in person—but I’d sure want him around if I were in danger.  He meets violence with violence, and I’m not sure I approve of that in the real world (some would say it’s arguable that I don’t actually live in the real world)—but since he never attacks first, and the bad guys are like really bad, it works for me in the books.

He’s larger than life, of course, with a number of nearly super-human characteristics and an unlikely ability to figure out what the bad guys are going to do by just putting himself in their place.  I mean, it’s not really believable that a person can stand outside the Four Seasons in New York, look at the surrounding blocks and decide that the quarry must be in the third brownstone on the left out of all the millions of places to hide in the city.  But I can suspend my disbelief that far.

I like competent characters.  Reacher is that, for sure.  Those first 15 books were a good find.

Now I’ve got to go find the last two.