Here’s One Reason I Enjoy a Lee Child Book

I know I go on about Lee Childs and his fictional almost-super-hero character, Ramblin’ Man Jack Reacher. His plots go from implausible at best to outright ridiculous, and I don’t care. They are warm popcorn, coated in fresh melted butter, with tiny fireworks explosions of salt crystals.

And, every once in a while, he lays out a paragraph that reads like this one:

“The woman wiped the neck of the bottle on the hem of her dress and held it out toward him. He shook his head. Sat down on the porch step. The old wood creaked once under his weight. The glider kept rocking, back and forth. It was almost silent. Almost, but not quite. There was a small sound from the mechanism that came once at the end of each swing, and a little creak from a porch board as it started its return. Reacher could smell mildew from the cushions, and bourbon from the bottle.”

On the other end of the continuum, and equally entertaining, we have Reacher’s breakfast experience in an un-named fast food chain restaurant.

“… He had more coffee and an English muffin filled with a round piece of ham and something that might once have been an egg, first dried and powdered and then reconstituted. His threshold of culinary acceptability was very low, but right then he felt like he might be pushing at the bottom edge of his personal envelope.”

I just love this stuff.