In Too Deep: A Jack Reacher Novel
The opening pages for In Too Deep was almost too painful, and I closed the book, set it on the shelf with the rest of the first edition, hardback “Jack Reacher” novels I’ve got. Think I’m missing the first two or three in hardback, and they might not even have been issued like, maybe a re-issue? Got trade paperbacks for the first couple of them.
In Too Deep stars Jack Reacher, a loner with a peculiar set of attributes, West Point, Military family, and no fixed address. What I was thinking about, first thoughts one morning, about the simple, workman-like prose. Not convoluted and stylized, and no fancy tricks with punctuation, just simple narrative that carries the story forward, advances the plot. The image header I’m currently using for some of this is a selection of Stuart Woods’ books, part of the collection, and I recall, when he was alive, the books were matter-of-fact, plain prose that pushed a narrative forward — seamlessly. Narrative as defined by both plot and story.
