Killing Floor by Lee Child, 1997

Opening line: I was arrested in Eno's diner. At twelve o'clock, I was eating eggs and drinking from the highway to the edge of town.

The first thing I noticed the moment I read the opening lines was Lee Child’s writing style—refreshing and freewheeling without losing the intensity of the plot. The first-person narrative is matter of fact and almost conversational. It seemed as if the English novelist, who was born Jim Grant, was sitting across from me in a roadside diner and narrating his first story about Jack Reacher, his tall and hardy protagonist.

Jack Reacher is as appealing as Lee Child’s writing, as compelling as Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne. Neither knows fear. Both operate with grim determination and cold efficiency, and get to the root of things no matter what. Essentially, Reacher and Bourne are survivors. But the comparison between the two clever heroes ends there, for the stories and the worlds they inhabit are very different.

In Killing Floor, the drifter and former military cop is arrested for murder shortly after he arrives in Margrave, a murky town in Georgia. A case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Reacher and a timid guy named Hubble, who "confesses" to the murders, are interned in a state prison where our man becomes the unintended victim of a murderous attack meant for the other.

Convinced of his innocence, the police let off Reacher, who then discovers that one of the dead men who he was accused of killing was his older brother, Joe. Reacher stays back to avenge the death of a brother he was fond of as a kid and had almost forgotten when he grew up. He and detective Finlay and police officer Roscoe, to whom he is attracted, begin a secret investigation. The case takes them through a bloody trail lined with more bodies, including that of police chief Morrison and his wife, Hubble’s disappearance, and eventually to a brilliant counterfeit operation whose billion-dollar tentacles stretch into the mayor’s office and Margrave police.

Killing Floor has received mixed reviews, some good, some bad, and some average. I thought it was a realistic and hard-hitting debut by Lee Child who plates up a decent mixture of action, including some guerrilla-style killing by the fearless Reacher, and conventional detective work. The narrative is laced with some good lines, like the one I have reproduced below. Reacher is constantly on the move and so is the narrative pace. 

“You can’t find him, can you?” I said. “You’re useless, Kliner. You’re a useless piece of shit. You think you’re some kind of a smart guy, but you can’t find Hubble. You couldn’t find your asshole if I gave you a mirror on a stick.”

Elsewhere, the book is a fascinating study in counterfeiting which, we are told, is well-nigh impossible to accomplish in America. But as Joe, a government official who was hot on the trail of the crime syndicate, and Reacher find out, it can be done—and how.

Now that I have had a glimpse into the not unpleasant world of Jack Reacher, I’m eager to see how his no-nonsense character develops. The series has attracted a lot of attention, not least because of the 2013 namesake film where Tom Cruise plays the eponymous hero. Although, frankly, it’s a role that would have suited a younger Liam Neeson better.

Recommended.