Read and pass on...

Some time ago dear hubby and I visited some friends. Later that evening somehow the conversation turned to books. They had a shopping bag full of books, waiting to be discarded. I was welcome to pick any books I liked. There was only one condition: read them and pass them on. No problem.

One of the books I took with me was Lee Child's "Bad luck and trouble". A Jack Reacher story. My very first Jack Reacher thriller. Which is good, because it gives you an open mind. Jack Reacher is atypical for a modern man. He doesn't own a cell phone, a house, a car, a credit card. The only thing he owns is a folding toothbrush and a debit card. Up side (or down side, depends on which way you look at it) of this all is that he doesn't pay any taxes and is hard to reach. So when one of his old army buddies is in trouble, the only way to reach him is through a deposit on his bank account. Jack has a sometimes very irritating habit to calculate everything by heart. For instance: he calculates his bank balance. Let's say he's very good at math. For someone who isn't good at math, it is somewhat annoying. But in the novel, it helps him and his old band of brothers save the day.

Is it a good book? At least it kept me reading. The story is exiting enough, the pace is good and most of all... it has a kind of realism. You can see a story like this happening in the real world. A lot of weird things happen in the real world. So why not an old army team taking on some low lives selling American Army weapons to terrorists.

Is it a keeper or to pass on? This one will be passed on. The story is nice, it was a good read, but somehow I don't see Jack Reacher on my bookshelves. Don't know why. I keep Steve Berry, for example. Maybe I change my mind. If not, this book is going to pay a visit at the Oxfam in Canterbury during our summer holiday.