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Leamington Letters #135: The Midnight Line

18/11/2017

7 Comments

 
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I am proud to say that I was an early adopter of Jack Reacher. Long before the literati cottoned on, I was acting, once a year, usually in the first week of November, like a teenager on the eve of the publication of a new Harry Potter, arriving at my local Waterstone’s at opening time to pick up the latest episode in the life of the loner ex-MP and then, having cleared the day, devouring it with relish.
 
I couldn’t have done it everyday. It works that there is merely one such event per year. As Michelle Chang says in the note she leaves for Reacher at the start of The Midnight Line, comparing him to New York: “I love to visit, but I could never live there.”
 
Me too.
 
But this year was different. For one reason or another, I was a few days late opening the book. By which time I had heard and read a few reviews. A “gentler” Jack Reacher awaits I was told.
 
Oh, shit. I don’t read Reacher for gentleness, at least not in the modern sense of the word, although he is of course “a veray parfait gentil knight’ in the old sense. But no worries. In less than 20 pages, he had already dispatched seven bikers outside a bar – “six fat guys and a runt” he says. “That’s a walk in the park.”
 
And that’s pretty much it as far as traditional Reacher is concerned. Oh, there is that minor contretemps with three cowboys, two thirds of the way in, but he only kills one of them. And for the remainder of the novel, he becomes increasingly emotionally involved in his quest.
 
I won’t spoil it by giving you too much of the plot, except to say that this is a traditional romance narrative in which our hero undergoes his various tests and trials to achieve his goal. And in case we don’t get it, that transcendent goal is a ring. Yes, a ring. Belonging to a woman. And the location is the sparsely populated, wide open spaces of the American mid-west, with long blacktops running endlessly, where your nearest neighbour is twenty or more miles away and probably up to no good.
 
Like living on opioids. Or dealing them. Or both.
 
What distinguishes this Reacher, though, and this Lee Child novel, is the emotional engagement with the characters. These are not the usual stereotypes. The baddies are not all bad. The addicts are real people, with reasons. And the issue which Reacher finds himself dealing with is a real issue.
 
One can sense the anger of Lee Child and his protagonist on every page in the last third of the book, his 22nd and certainly best for some time.
 
“We fought for freedom” Reacher says. “And this is what freedom looks like.”
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Dylan in Osaka, Japan from February 1978. This is what “Live at Budokan”, recorded a week later, should have been.
7 Comments
SteveD
18/11/2017 11:06:09

Agree absolutely. This is the best Reacher ever for the reasons you explain. And the stuff about the opioid epidemic is fascinating and new to me. Can't wait for next November.

Reply
Greg
18/11/2017 11:16:03

Haven't read it yet but downloading on my Kindle as I type. Sounds good. Thanks for the review.

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Danny
18/11/2017 16:15:08

I never embraced Reacher in the way that the literati and of course your good self did. Not because I am in any sense a literary snob but simply because I don't do this kind of stuff. You have persuaded me to give him a go.

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Tim
19/11/2017 13:20:27

Down those mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean ...

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Neil Bevan
19/11/2017 17:50:36

I enjoyed this Max. And I take this opportunity to thank you for introducing me not only to Jack Reacher but, much earlier, to Parker and Spenser too. Innocent, hard-boiled amusement!

May I just add the observation that 'Tim's' Chandler quote becomes even more telling when you append the second part "....who is neither tarnished nor afraid." Oh boy.

Reply
Tim Johnston
19/11/2017 22:13:43

Thanks Neil Bevan for completing the quote. Couldn’t remember the final bit off the top of my head - hence the ellipsis - and it is the killer. Best wishes Tim

Reply
Allan
20/11/2017 11:28:11

So who do you read on the other 364 days? And why? I think we should be told. BTW, share your enthusiasm for Reacher and this latest one.

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     Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father. and grandfather. Resident in Warwick, England.

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