First, but not my last Jack Reacher thriller
Bewertet mit 4 Sternen
PLOT
Jack Reacher is headed to Chicago when his train passes through a small town called Mother's Rest. Since he doesn't really have a place to be, he decides to get off the train for a one-day stopover and perhaps find out how the town got his name. Strolling around town he is being followed and most of the residents act weird around him.
"Why is this town called Mother's Rest"
Together with Michelle Chang, a woman he met at the train station the night he arrived, he tries to solve certain puzzles concerning this little town in the middle of nowhere. At the beinning his main concern is how the town got its name, but nobody wants to tell him. Chang's main concern is finding her missing partner, because he needed backup in a small private investigation that turned lethal. They team up and soon find out that Mother's Rest ismore mysterious than they thought.
OPINION
Before reading I wasn't sure if it'd be a problem that I didn't read any of the nineteen preceding Jack Reacher thriller. I was more than happy to find out that the new thriller Make Me was able to be read as a stand alone book. However, Jack Reacher wasn't really introduced as a character and you either have to deal with not having a lot of background knowledge or have to read the other books - since I really enjoyed reading Make Me, I don't think reading the other books by Lee Child would be a shame. ;) For me it was pretty easy to get a feeling for Jack Reacher and the way he lives his life. A loner that went through a lot - not only in his military career. His honest character and way of thinking outside the box made the thriller a good read for me. Chang was also an important character in this volume, but she seemed to founder next to Reacher and often times she seemed like a bystander to me.
"Then it becomes an ethical debate. Do we respect a person's choice, plain and simple, or do we feel obliged to judge his reasons?" ~ p. 336
The thriller itself doesn't contain much action, which I don't mind at all. Even though it starts slowly and it is more about solving the puzzle through talking rather than fighting, I felt drawn into the story. In a lot of books the story feels too constructed and the protagonists tend to suddenly fall into the right place and solve the puzzle without actually having to do anything - it seems they rather solve it by chance. But in Lee Child's thriller it felt like the leading characters actually worked for the finale. They didn't just stumple upon the solution. Even though the thriller isn't action loaded, there are still a lot of scenes Reacher shows off his fighting skills and especially the end is packed with gruesome revelations.
The language itself wasn't my kinda thing. The sentences were kept short and easy and the book was full of unnecessary repetitions. For anyone that feels his English is slipping away and they just want to refresh their memory this book is perfect. It's not difficult to understand and the story is still great to follow. I'd recommend to go for it.
CONCLUSION
Make Me is nothing unexpected and full of thriller clichés, but still a great book I can recommend. The story had a few twists and turns that made it worth reading. Everyone that enjoys a good thriller will get one's money worth. For me the book is worth 4 out of 5 stars.