Killing Floor by Lee Child (1997)

‘He seemed like a capable guy to me. Tell the truth, you remind me of him. You seem like a capable guy to me, too.’
(Hubble to Reacher, page 112)

After reading the 20th Jack Reacher novel I went back to the first novel in the series to see how it all started. Violently, is the answer.

I was arrested in Eno’s diner.

is the opening sentence which commences Jack Reacher’s first adventure and inaugurates the series of 22 bestselling crime thrillers in which he features.

Margrave Reacher asks the driver of a Greyhound bus to stop at the little town of Margrave, in Georgia, purely on a whim because he’d had a postcard from his brother Joe, saying the famous blues singer Blind Blake lived or played here.

Arrested But instead of moseying about town and talking music with the locals, he finds himself locked up and interrogated by the (Harvard-educated and fairly reasonable, and black) homicide detective Farley. Why? Because a body has been found at the warehouses Reacher must have walked past on the way into town. The corpse had been shot in the head twice, his face blown off, and then the body frenziedly kicked so that every bone in his body had been smashed.

Hubble Reacher is fingerprinted and photographed by the good-looking, relaxed woman police officer Roscoe. Then questioned by detective Farley. During this process, it emerges that the name of a local businessman was scribbled on a piece of paper scrunched up in the dead man’s shoe, one Paul Hubble. When he is brought in for questioning, to everyone’s amazement he enthusiastically confesses to doing the murder himself, even though there is all kinds of evidence that he didn’t, such as that he was at a party where loads of witnesses saw him.

Farley Over the course of questioning, the relationship between Farley and Reacher softens and becomes a sort of collaboration, because Reacher was himself a Military Policeman in the U.S. Army for 14 years and has carried out lots of investigations himself. He is able to provide a stone cold alibi – he was 400 miles away on the Greyhound at the time of the murder – and begins to help a sceptical Farley think through the various oddities and possibilities of the case.

Prison Despite starting to think Reacher is not guilty, Farley sends both him and Hubble to the local prison for the weekend, where he is meant to be held in the transient, custody cells. However, the head of the prison accidentally on purpose has them put in the main, long-term prison area.

Attacks Here not one but two violent attacks are made on Hubble and Reacher. The first is led by the enormous, terrifying head of the black gang in the prison. The leader is intimidating feeble rich guy Hubble into kneeling and giving him a blow job when Reacher, with a sigh, realises he has to intervene in order to maintain respect and kudos. So Reacher confronts and then nuts the man, smashing most of his face.

Strangling Later, in the showers, the pair are attacked by a posse of white Aryan supremacists. One tries to strangle him but Reacher breaks his fingers before gouging out one of his eyes, while kicking in the larynx of another one, at which point the black gang arrive to attack the Aryans and a general prison riot ensues, during which Reacher and Hubble are evacuated back to the holding cells where they should have been all along.

Capable man So far so violent. But also, so far, so incredibly capable of six-foot-five Reacher, ex-U.S. Military Police and a man with a lifetime’s experience of winning super-violent brawls. Taking down the hardest black guy in the prison. And then three of the hardest whites. Wow.

Hubble talks Saving Hubble’s life gives Reacher power over Hubble who proceeds to talk, or at least to admit that there is something big, really big, going on in Margrave. It involves about ten people and Hubble admits he plays a key part. But ‘they’ have threatened that if he talks, to anyone, they will nail him to the wall of his house, cut off his balls and make his wife eat them, and then perform unspeakable acts on his two little children. Hence Hubble’s catatonic fear. This is why, as soon as Farley told him about the murdered man with his name and number in his shoe, Hubble confessed in such a hurry. He (mistakenly) thought he would be safe in prison. Er, no.

The investigator Hubble admits that the Big Scam and the frighteners ‘they’ were putting on him had prompted him to hire an investigator, anonymously, to help him find a way out. When Farley told him about the corpse at the warehouse, Hubble realised it was the investigator who the gang must have murdered. And so Hubble panicked, because of the threat to his family.

Reacher realises it wasn’t a mistake that he and Hubble were put in the permanent part of the prison rather than the milder and safer custody cells. Someone fixed it up with the prison supervisor, who then tipped off the Aryan Supremacists in particular, to kill him. Why? What has he done to anyone?

Released Reacher is finally released because his alibi, that he only got off the Greyhound bus eight hours after the murder was committed, pans out, with eye witness testimony from the bus driver and other passengers. By this time Reacher has struck up an edgy relationship with the black detective, Farley. Called in for a debrief Reacher shares  his thoughts on what is really going on.

Joe Reacher So Reacher is in the police office when the identification of the fingerprints of the faceless body in the warehouse arrive. Reacher’s life – and the whole book – takes a big lurch when he learns that the dead man is… his brother, his only kin in the world (both parents being dead), Joe his older brother that he used to stick by through thick and thin throughout their long, peripatetic childhood, as sons of a U.S. soldier, continually moving from one military base to another around the world.

His whole life they had looked out for each other and now… Joe is dead. That’s right, dead.

And to a man like Reacher (a six-foot-five inch, ex-Military Policeman with a taste for clear, logical thinking and the capacity for seriously hurting anyone who gets in his way) this can only mean one thing.

Finding the guys who did it, and taking his revenge. Looking out for Joe one last time. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do (or, more precisely, a man’s gotta kill who a man’s gotta kill).

The rest of the novel follows the intricate sequence of clues and discoveries by which Reacher, now working closely with detective Farley, and with the sexy Police Officer Roscoe, protect Hubble and his family from ‘them’, and realise that ‘they’ have representatives within the police force who are shadowing and reporting on all their discoveries.

The revelation of the big scam is nicely paced. There are plenty of surprises and unexpected shocks. The violence gets extreme, particularly when the corrupt, fat, old head of the police department gets the Hubble treatment i.e. gets nailed to the wall, his balls cut off, his wife forced to eat them, yuk.

Justified revenge Reacher identifies the glaring, threatening son of the old man who ‘owns’ half the town as the psychopath who carried out these gruesome acts and – in a tense scene – disposes of him and his three accomplices when they arrive at the (now empty) Hubble family home, to murder them.

Instead Reacher is waiting for them and takes them out, one by one, in a display of unstoppable physical supremacy reminiscent of other male heroes played by the likes of Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis or Jason Bourne.

Factual information

As so often with thrillers, at the book’s core is a whole load of factual information which is interesting in its own right.

Counterfeiting The Big Scam turns out to be an enormous money counterfeiting operation, which explains Reacher’s brother’s involvement. Joe had risen to be the head of the FBI’s anti-counterfeiting unit, as we learn when Reacher visits some of the counterfeiting experts he worked with.

Through their mouths we learn a lot about the history of counterfeiting. We learn that the academics worked as young men during World War Two on a plan to bankrupt the Nazi economy by dropping billions of fake Deutschmarks into Germany.

There is then quite a lengthy explanation of how U.S. currency is designed and manufactured.

Assuming it’s true, this all makes for very interesting reading.

The unexpected plot twists, reversals and betrayals continue virtually up to the last page. It is a very impressive updating of the basic thriller genre for our times (well, the 1990s) and you can see why Reacher, with his size, physical competence, military experience and calm logical thinking made, and continues to make, such an impression on fans of the genre.

Broken sentences

The twentieth novel was told in short punchy sentences by a third-person narrator. This, the first book in the series, is told in short, punchy sentences in the first person.

In fact the nature of the narrator is irrelevant: first person or third person, everyone in Reacherworld thinks and speaks the same way, laconic, to the point, logical, tough.

‘They killed him,’ she said. Just a simple statement. ‘Like they killed Joe. I think I know how you must be feeling.’
I nodded.
‘They’ll pay for it,’ I said. ‘For both of them.’
‘You bet your ass,’ she said. (p.346)

More noticeable in this one than in number 20 is Child’s habit of breaking up what could be one long-ish sentence describing people performing consecutive actions, into a sequence of short sentences, each one describing just one specific action, with the subject of each verb carried over by implication.

He stood still for a moment then took out the key and unlocked them. Clipped them back on his belt. Looked at me. (p.18)

I used the john and rinsed my face in the sink. Pulled myself up into the bed. Took off my shoes. Left them on the foot of the bed. (p.79)

We drove for miles. Found the right terminal. Missed a lane change and passed the short-term parking. Came around again and lined up to the barrier. (p.312)

There are hundreds of examples, some extending for five or six consecutive pronoun-less clauses, each of which has been turned into a short, snappy, freestanding sentence.

He took out the tape machine. Dragged out the cords. Positioned the microphone between us. Tested it with his fingernail. Rolled the tape back. Ready. (p.38)

There are plenty of three-word-long sentences. Some two. Or one. All working to the same end, conveying a no-nonsense, tough guy, to the point, no fat on the bone, macho mindset.

Finlay and I hitched ourselves into the barber chairs. Put our feet up on the chrome rests. Started reading. (p.326)

The tone says, ‘Of course he’s been interviewed before. Held in police custody. Put in handcuffs. Locked in a cell. He’s a Real Man. Had plenty of fights. Outstared plenty of cops. Toughed out many a gaol cell. All par for the course. Meat and drink.’


But Reacher is not just a fighting machine. He is a computer. He analyses and assesses. Repeatedly Reacher tells us that his military training and, specifically his long years of work in the Military Police, have taught him to process information, to work through it methodically. Many of the breakthroughs come from anomalies planted earlier in the narrative, little things someone said or did which, on reflection, Reacher realises stand out, don’t make sense, are clues.

Evaluate. Long experience had taught me to evaluate and assess. When the unexpected gets dumped on you, don’t waste time. Don’t figure out how or why it happened. Don’t recriminate. Don’t figure out whose fault it is. Don’t work out how to avoid the same mistake next time. All of that you can do later. If you survive. First of all you evaluate. Analyse the situation. Identify the downside. Assess the upside. Plan accordingly. Do all that and you give yourself a better chance of getting through to the other stuff later. (p.83)

The novel is larded with little homilies like this, advice on how to handle situations. Reacher says much of it stems from his military training, so I wonder how much of it is derived from the no doubt numerous and copious handbooks for soldiers and the military police which Child must have used in his research. How much from police training. How much Child has made up.

This habit of sharing his life wisdom with us is a leading characteristic of the books. In Tripwire we learn that Reacher’s mentor, Leon Garber, had various rules for living, which Reacher usefully quotes as he applies them to the perilous situations he finds himself. Similarly, One Shot has a great scene where Reacher tackles five rednecks in a bar and shares with us Reacher’s Nine Rules for Bar Fights.

It comes as in surprise to learn that 21 years after this first book, and 22 novels into the series, Child has written enough text like this – life advice, how to think through problems, how to survive confrontations – that it has been cut and pasted into a stand-alone book, Reacher’s Rules: Life Lessons From Jack Reacher, which was published in 2012.

And all the characters are like this. They all spend a lot of time whirring and clicking like computers. They all have their own agendas (make money, run a crime outfit, assassinate anyone who gets in the way, or solve crimes, find the suspect, collect evidence etc). Everyone has projects and agendas and, in Reacherworld, you can watch them processing every new development into their thinking and adjusting their plans accordingly.

He was thinking hard… I had never seen someone think so visibly. His mouth was working soundlessly and he was fiddling with his fingers. Like he was checking off positives and negatives. Weighing things up. I watched him. I saw him make his decision. He turned and looked over at me. (p.92)

There are regular spurts of violence – fights, brawls, taking down armed men – and each novel includes at least one scene of really gruesome, sadistic bloodshed. And it’s this which, inevitably, readers often remember. Not least because of the cold-blooded efficiency with which Reacher – once provoked – kills the bad guys.

He dropped the shotgun. It thudded into the carpet. I pulled him backward and turned him and ran him out through the door. Into the downpour. Dug my fingers deeper into his eyes. Hauled his head back. Cut his throat. You don’t do it with one elegant swipe. Not like in the movies. No knife is sharp enough for that. There’s all sorts of tough gristle in the human throat. You have to saw back and forth with a lot of strength. Takes a while. But it works. It works well. By the time you’ve sawed back to the bone, the guy is dead. This guy was no exception. His blood hosed out and mixed with the rain. He sagged against my grip. Two down. (p.407)

But even the violence is highly thought about and planned. The fight scenes are notable for the care Child takes to explain how Reacher assesses every situation, estimates the angles, uses all his training to calculate how to win.

I was trained by experts. Guys who traced their own training back to World War Two, Korea, Vietnam. People who had survived things I had only read about in books. They taught me methods, details, skills. Most of all they taught me attitude. They taught me that inhibitions would kill me. Hit early, hit hard. Kill with the first blow. Get your retaliation in first. Cheat. The gentlemen who behaved decently weren’t there to train anybody. They were already dead. (p.85)

In summary, the majority of the text is made up of people planning, thinking and assessing. The books are a lot more about ratiocination and thinking through problems – combat situations, strategic planning, problem analysis, plan-making – than you might expect.

I looked all over the place. Looked at where Teale was sitting, looked at the office inner door, checked Kliner’s line of fire, guessed where Roscoe and Charlie might end up. I calculated angles and estimated distances. I came up with one definite conclusion. (p.503)

Reacher girls

Of course there’s a girl, by which I mean young woman, who fancies Reacher from the get-go and on page 163 of this 523-page-long novel they finally have the wild passionate sex the reader has seen on the cards for some time. Tear each other’s clothes off. She rides him till they collapse in a sweaty heap, spent and sated. Shower then do it all over again, etc. Championship sex.

If James Bond has ‘Bond girls’ then Jack Reacher appears to have ‘Reacher girls’, and every bit as improbable.

This one, Officer Roscoe, is part of the Margrave Police Department. When Reacher is first brought in, she gets him a cup of coffee. She is friendly. She leans her breasts against the desk when she takes his fingerprints, with a dazzling smile on her face. She is there to collect Reacher when he gets out of prison after his eventful few days inside. She drives him to Hubble’s house to interview him, though Hubble has gone missing. When Reacher is there at the police department when the news comes through the fax that the dead man is his brother, Roscoe holds his hand.

And then back to her place for wild sex.

Roscoe put on the clothes she’d brought from her place in the morning. Jeans, shirt, jacket. Looked wonderful. Very feminine, but very tough. She had a lot of spirit. (p.284)

I’m sure we have all met woman police officers just like Officer Roscoe.

Related links

Reviews of other Jack Reacher novels

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