Well, I seem to be going through a phase of reading the more modern “Jack Reacher” thriller novels that are now mostly written by Lee Child’s younger brother Andrew. They’re fast-paced plot-focused books and, for whatever reason, I need this in order to keep up my interest in reading at the moment.
I don’t know if I’ll read all of them [Edit: I’ll read another one, then read other stuff…], but it’s keeping me reading at the moment. And, because of the fiery orange cover and the melodramatic title, I thought that I’d take a look at “Better Off Dead” (2021) today. No, I’m not reading them in order. But they’re fairly stand-alone novels anyway.
I bought this book second-hand on the internet for less than a fiver. One of the cool things about this long-running series which, by the time this review will go out, will have reached its thirtieth book is that you can often find these novels for surprisingly sensible prices on the second-hand market. They’re that popular. And it isn’t difficult to see why. These are books that are gripping enough that they actually make reading fun.
So, let’s take a look at “Better Off Dead” (2021). This review may contain SPOILERS.
This is the 2022 Penguin (UK) paperback edition of “Better Off Dead” (2021) that I read.
The novel begins the US state of Arizona, with a third-person perspective scene set beside the border fence at night. A tall man meets up with four guys that emerge from a car. They get into a pretty brutal fight and the tall guy seems to be winning until a mysterious woman emerges from the shadows and shoots him. The story then cuts to the local doctor, Houllier, who puts the tall man’s body into the town’s morgue. Then a local gangster called Dendoncker shows up and demands to see the body…
After the very first chapter, the story switches to first-person for the rest of the book. Muscular former US military policeman Jack Reacher spends his life wandering across the US, solving crimes and fighting bad guys. And he has just found himself on an isolated road in Arizona. A Jeep has crashed into a nearby tree and a woman is slumped over the steering wheel. But, when he goes to check her pulse, she spins round and points a gun at him. It’s an ambush! But not one meant for Reacher. So, he convinces the woman – Michaela Fenton – to let him hide nearby in case things go wrong…
One of the first things that I will say about this novel is that it’s a pretty decent action-thriller novel. It’s a bit weak near the end, but still entertaining enough to finish. Yes, in recent books, Jack Reacher has become a bit more of a morally-ambiguous “action hero” than he was in the much older books, and this one definitely has the more “hard-boiled” flavour to it that you’d expect from a modern “Reacher” novel.
The first-person perspective helps to keep things focused and, thankfully, there is only one perspective switch in the entire book. If there had been more than one, it would have gotten very annoying. But it is thankfully only done once and for a good reason, like a “cold open” in a TV show, and it sort of works. And, yes, this book sometimes feels like “reading a TV show” but, hey, novels are meant to be entertaining and this one succeeds here.
The story is reasonably decent. A lot of the novel revolves around Reacher and Fenton actually trying to find Dendoncker. This adds a lot of suspense and also allows for lots of fights and/or chase sequences involving his henchmen, as the intrepid duo try to figure out a way to get one of the henchmen to lead them back to him. Weirdly, when you do eventually meet him properly, it’s weirdly anticlimactic. He’s made out to be this fearsome ultra-monstrous villain, who is a master at staying hidden… but he’s just like a random older man with henchmen.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still thrills aplenty here. And this is definitely one of the rougher modern “Jack Reacher” novels I’ve read so far. Not as much of a bloodbath as “Blue Moon” (2019), but Reacher certainly isn’t a pacifist here! Whilst there are suspenseful moments and some detective-like moments to break this all up, this is one of those books where Reacher gets into a lot of brutal fist-fights.
He’s also not above doing the “John Wick” thing of killing bad guys who have already been incapacitated. No less than three of them in this book. In the “John Wick” movies, this detail is meant to show that John is a morally-ambiguous assassin. But Jack Reacher is ex-military. He was almost certainly taught the Geneva Convention, which explicitly forbids that sort of thing. Yes, he’s still a “good” character overall, but I’ve noticed that he’s definitely become much more of a morally-ambiguous character (since about 2019) than he used to be.
The version of Jack Reacher these days feels a lot more rough and “hard-boiled” than he did in the older pre-2019 books. He’s still got brains, but the story focuses slightly more on his brawn than the older novels did. He’s very much a gritty hardboiled action hero, rather than “A detective who also knows how to fight”, here. And, yes, all of this makes the novel more thrilling in some ways and it’s a refreshing change from some of the more understated books from the 2010s (like “The Midnight Line” or “Past Tense“)… but I’m gradually starting to miss the older version of Reacher slightly.
In the classic thriller fashion, the plot starts out relatively small-scale and then gradually widens in scope as the story progresses. Still, the final parts of the novel feel a little rushed and mildly anticlimactic, given the build-up. The main goal of the villains’ evil plot is figured out and foiled in like two or three chapters at the very most. And the final confrontation with Dendoncker is also weirdly understated and not really that satisfying in dramatic terms. But, whilst the destination is a little underwhelming, the journey is still pretty thrilling and even the “underwhelming” parts of this novel at least try to include some dramatic stuff.
As for characters, there isn’t a gigantic amount of characterisation here. It’s more about the plot than the characters, but there’s enough characterisation to make you at least vaguely care about what is happening. And the writing style is the sort of hardboiled, fast-paced writing that you’d expect as well. The novel is 411 pages long and this seems about the right length for it, given the faster pacing. It feels as long as it needs to be.
All in all, this is a pretty decent action-thriller novel. Yes, I found the ending to be slightly weak but it still remained reasonably gripping. If you want an entertaining hardboiled novel, with lots of brutal fight scenes, which moves at a decent speed and is fairly gripping, then this one might be worth checking out. Is it the very best “Jack Reacher” novel? No! But it also isn’t the worst either.
If I had to give it a rating out of five, it would get a four.
