Book Review – Lee Child’s “Killing Floor”

Back in 1997 the literary world was introduced to a new author named Lee Child (a pen name for Jim Grant).

He presented us with Killing Floor, an action-packed thriller starring Jack Reacher, a former United States Army MP who can think on his feet and deliver lethal blows to any enemy.  This is the first Jack Reacher story out of (at this point in time) a series of eighteen books.

Written completely in the first-person point-of-view, Killing Floor begins as Jack Reacher decides to disembark from a Greyhound bus in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia.  Margrave is a small town south of downtown Atlanta and towards the western side of the state.  Once a thriving small town, Margrave slowly shrank in size once Interstate 75 was completed and traffic simply bypassed the town.

For the past five months, Jack Reacher has simply been wandering around the U.S.  He’s recently retired from the U.S. Army and his previous profession of working as a military policeman.  Reacher had been living overseas for most of his life, and he’s never really seen his home country.  Now that he’s finished with his military service, Reacher is taking his time and visiting a variety of cities and states, all while using cash and trying to remain anonymous in the crowds.  Essentially he’s a ghost.

Jack Reacher’s life changes though once he steps into a diner in Margrave, Georgia.  It was a quick decision to disembark in Margrave.  Jack’s older brother, Joe, a man whom Jack had not spoken to in a number of years, had recommended that Jack visit the town and try to find the grave site of that belonging to Blind Blake, a legendary musician from the 1930s.

However, when Jack is trying to enjoy a meal in the diner, he’s quickly arrested by a team of local police officers.  In the town’s jail he learns that he’s booked for the murder of a man recently discovered at the edge of town.  But how could Jack be the murderer when he has never set foot in this town and he first arrived hours ago, yet the murder allegedly took place the previous night?

Inside the jail, Reacher meets a police detective named Finlay.  A transplant from Boston, Finlay questions Reacher about the murder and soon realizes that he may be innocent.  However, the town’s police chief, a man named Morrison, insists that he saw Reacher at the scene of the crime.  Until Reacher’s whereabouts are confirmed, he’s going to have to temporarily be placed in custody.

While he’s in custody, Finlay shows Reacher a small piece of paper that was found hidden on the dead body.  It only has a phone number on it.  When they call the number, they discover that it belongs to Paul Hubble, a banker who lives there in Margrave.  Hubble is quickly brought in for questioning.  When he’s pressed by Chief Morrison, Hubble admits to committing the murder, though he won’t go into any details.  However, Reacher doesn’t believe that the banker was capable of committing such a heinous act.

Both Reacher and Hubble are placed inside of a prison van and transported to Warburton Correctional Facility, though they are not to be booked as inmates.  They’re just temporarily being held as the small police station in Margrave is not capable of holding prisoners overnight.  Inside the jail Reacher and Hubble are attacked by inmates, and Reacher easily beats them all.  He’s later intentionally targeted by some bikers, which Reacher again wins his fights.  He later tries to press Hubble on more information about what really happened, but Hubble mainly keeps to himself.  Hubble only reveals that there’s a big conspiracy and he’s marked as a dead man.  But if he can live until that following Sunday, then he might survive the ordeal.

The following day both Reacher and Hubble are released from Warburton.  Both of their stories check out and neither of them are connected to the murder of the mystery man.  Waiting for Reacher outside of the jail is Officer Roscoe, a female police officer who caught his attention back in the Margrave police station.  It turns out that the advice that Reacher gave her was correct and helpful towards the investigation, and she quickly realizes that he can be a powerful asset towards solving the crime.  The same goes for Finlay’s opinion.

They return to Margrave and continue to help Finlay solve the crime of the murdered man.  Jack Reacher learns about Mr. Kliner, the richest man in town and his organization, the Kliner Foundation.

A second body was also discovered not too far from the first murder victim.  When Finlay and Reacher go to the morgue and speak with the medical officer and try to get any clues, they learn the identification of the first murder victim.  It’s Joe Reacher, Jack’s older brother who was working with the U.S. Treasury Department.  Perhaps it was more than just fate that brought the Reacher brothers together after all these years.

As Jack copes with the sudden loss of his brother, he quickly develops a relationship with Roscoe.  This distraction is short though as the next victim is discovered.  When Roscoe tells Reacher about it, he thinks that it was Hubble who was killed as he was recently reported missing by his wife.  However, the victims were really Chief Morrison and his wife.  Morrison was nailed to a wall and brutally murdered and his wife was also killed.  It was a powerful message.

The town’s mayor steps in as the temporary leader of the police force.  This somewhat complicates the investigation as he tries to distract Finlay and Roscoe by having them solve the killing of Morrison instead of Joe Reacher.  Things are further complicated when a hit squad tries to kill Roscoe and Reacher in the middle of the night at Roscoe’s home.  Fortunately for them, that night Reacher decided to take Roscoe out of town to take their minds off the investigation.

What follows is a deeper look at the U.S. currency and a massive counterfeiting operation lead by Mr. Kilner.  It’s a race against time as more people disappear, others are kidnapped, and Jack Reacher and Finlay don’t know who they can trust.  Some people are in on the conspiracy while others are merely hired help.  All of them are extremely dangerous.

Killing Floor ends with Jack Reacher solving the money counterfeiting problem and using Finlay’s help to save Roscoe and Hubble’s wife and children from certain death.  The counterfeiting operation is stopped and the heroes live to tell the tale.

So is Killing Floor a good book?

Yes and no.

For starters, Killing Floor is a very simple read.  The story is pretty smooth, the action scenes are nice, and the overall plot is fairly simple.  You’ll probably have most of it figured out just past the halfway point in the book.  The last third of the story merely confirms your suspicions.

Don’t look for any technical details or exotic settings in this book.  The locations seem very generic (He was way off for describing Atlanta’s airport.  That entire sequence that ended with the murdered woman was not even close to how the airport operates in reality, even with the pre-9/11 days with much more lax security.), and most of the places are easily forgettable.  How in the world Reacher and Hubble were able to use a car to crash into the police station to rescue Finlay, without any alarms sounding or anybody responding to the incident, is anybody’s guess.

Something else that bothered me was Lee Child’s grammar style.  This book is filled with sentence fragments.  Whether this is for effect or it’s a style of writing common in England (Jim Grant is a British author), it’s extremely annoying for American audiences.  The same is true for his over-abundant usage of “OK” (versus writing out “okay”).  In some cases you will literally see “OK” at least six or seven times ON A SINGLE PAGE.

Yet another problem with Killing Floor is the extremely simple dialogue between the characters.  Most of it simply is not believable.  Nor is it really interesting or exciting.  You can just skim the dialogue and still have a general understanding of most of the details and plot elements.

Personally, I couldn’t wait to finish reading Killing Floor.  Not that it was an exciting book, but rather Lee Child’s writing style was bugging the hell out of me.  All of those damn sentence fragments actually made it hard to understand what should have been simple concepts and scenarios.  But because of his writing style, you’ll find yourself re-reading paragraphs and needing to pay close attention, otherwise you’ll find yourself lost and confused.

Will I read more of Lee Child’s books?

Probably.

Like I said, Killing Floor was a simple book.  The story itself wasn’t bad and some of the scenarios were kinda interesting.  It was the author’s writing style that made it so annoying.  Fortunately, my local library has many of his books in stock.