A new Jack Reacher book (and some other stuff)

A few years ago, quite by accident, I found myself reading The Killing Floor, Lee Child’s first book about ex-military MP Jack Reacher. Reacher is a huge loner who travels around America violently righting even more violent wrongs. Child has since written eleven more books with one, Nothing to Lose, just rolling off the presses. The books are meticulously plotted, and Reacher is a very satisfying animal who has an uncompromising morality and an uncanny knack to read a situation and respond instantly in the bravest, most effective and most violent way possible.

The New York Times today has a nice profile of Reacher’s creator, Lee Child. If you’re a Reacher fan, or are contemplating becoming one, you’d probably enjoy reading it. The Times does try to add an anti-War angle to it, but Child pretty much backs off from that stance. I do get the feeling, though, from reading the books, that while Child deeply admires the military he, in common with most of the world’s artistic class, opposes the War. Nothing obvious, however, despite what the Times tries to do.

By the way, if you’re not interested in a violent thriller, I’ve got another book for you, which my husband stumbled across at the library. It’s called The Dirt on Clean : An Unsanitized History, by Katherine Ashenburg. It’s a wonderful romp through history, from ancient Greece to the present day, examining different approaches to cleanliness in Europe and America. The descriptions of people who bathed so infrequently that, when they finally took their clothes off, their skin came off too, will have you compulsively reaching for your soap and shower stall.