Review: Phoned in or ghost-written: does it matter?
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 08 10, 2013
Lee Child mashes a few short scenes together and calls it a novella. "High Heat" is neither the historical Lee Child nor the familiar Jack Reacher.The level of craft is off, way off. Time was, you could count on economical writing, short paragraphs in which there were no wasted words. Now Child offers word count, not weight. He's replaced detail with trivia. Sex feels forced, obligatory, and it distracts, rather than helps the reader to focus on Reacher's various missions.Based on Lee Child's last few clunky works, some readers wonder if he's using a ghost-writer. I don't think it matters whether this is lazy writing, or someone else's work. I'd rather continue to re-read the good stuff than bother with this flacid bloat.