Personal by Lee Child – Book review.

I have read all the Lee Child Jack Reacher books, but this one simply didn’t do it for me, so much so that I found myself putting it to one side three quarters of the way through – something I had never done with a Lee Child book before.

It is only recently that I have returned to it to complete. So why did I struggle with this one?

Firstly, it is written in the first person, something that Lee Child has done before, but not often, and not a choice that suits Jack Reacher in my humble opinion. “I elbowed him in the face” somehow doesn’t have the same gravitas as the identical scene seen through the all seeing eye of third person.

I have noticed it has been suggested that this book was not even written by Lee Child, not that I suspect that to be the case, but he wouldn’t be the first famous writer to do this, would he?

Indeed, it is becoming increasingly common for successful authors to farm out titles utilising the same characters for others to write. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose, get paid for a book but don’t even write it, but for whatever reason this one didn’t hold my attention.

And talking of Nice, that was the name of the latest seemingly obligatory female sidekick that appears in almost all the books, Casey Nice in this case. So what of the plot?

It centres around an American army assassin who has gone rogue and taken a potshot at the French president in Paris, and has even greater ambitions in London.

An assassin who has had previous run-ins with Jack, wouldn’t you just know it, and he’s seen as the natural guy to track him down.

I doubt if anyone alive believes that this is the best Jack Reacher book out there, and if you are reading them in chronological order you might be better in skipping this one and moving straight onto the next, “Make Me” which is much better.

So it’s three stars out of five for me on this one, whoever wrote it, and onto the next with hopes of a more entertaining plot.