A Wanted Man, by Lee Child (Delacorte Press; $28.00)

Jack Reacher is an unlikely hero. As he describes himself, he’s a “No-account, unemployed and homeless veteran. . . with no stable relationships.” He hitchhikes across the country and, even in this day and age, still manages to get rides. But the rides always end badly, with Reacher having to shoot bad guys and foil crime in whatever locale he finds himself.

In A Wanted Man, Reacher is still—as in Child’s most recent books—trying to get himself to Virginia. He’s fallen for a woman he’s spoken to on the phone, and wants to meet her in person to see if there’s the chance of romance. But, as always, his plans are detoured when his ride doesn’t quite work out. This time, he’s picked up by two guys and a woman, and the woman tries to signal to Reacher that something is amiss. The reader knows that earlier that evening, three guys had walked into a bunker but only two walked out. But where the woman came from, who the dead guy was, and why the FBI, CIA, and State Department are all involved in what looks to be a local crime is the crux of the story.

I really like Reacher, though I’ve read so many of Child’s mysteries that his character’s idiosyncrasies make me roll my eyes. For one thing, Reacher only owns the clothes on his back, since he has no luggage. So when they get dirty (three days on a shirt) he merely buys more. He budgets between $20-$25 a day, which he feels is “cheaper than living somewhere, and easier than washing and ironing and folding and packing.  That was for damn sure.” But where does he get his money? And if he carries it with him (he doesn’t seem like a credit card kind of a guy), how does he not get rolled by the occasional bad guy who picks him up?

Oh—I forgot. He’s Jack Reacher. Who would dare?

He also has an internal clock that should be in a museum. My mother has pointed out that he always knows what time it is, despite not wearing a wristwatch. In this book, he sets “the clock in his head for two hours” to force himself to wake up though he hasn’t slept for at least 24 hours.

But the little tic that I like the most is Reacher’s emphatic, “That was for damn sure” whenever he mentally agrees with himself.  (I included one of these lines in the quote in the third paragraph.) I once heard Lee Child speak at a book festival, and someone pointed out that he writes that line in his books frequently. The fan asked Child if he uses it so often because he uses it himself. As I recall (I wasn’t taking notes, and this was several years ago), Child said that it was more of a writer’s device to transition between scenes or action. I had never noticed the line prior to hearing the question, but once it was pointed out, I notice it whenever I read one of his books.  

Lee Child’s Jack Reacher stories are improbable, similar, and totally enjoyable. That’s for damn sure. 

Gone, by Randy Wayne White (Putnam; $25.95)

 I’ve always enjoyed Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford mysteries. I’m a sucker for mysteries set in Florida, and his were among the best. So I was excited to learn that he had started a new series, focusing this time on a young fishing guide/sleuth named Hannah Smith.

The series debut, Gone, made me laugh out loud—and it wasn’t meant to be funny.  Not because of flaws in any of the important elements. Smith was clever, brave and likeable. The plot was fine: a fabulously wealthy young woman has disappeared, perhaps in the company of a sadistic boyfriend, and Hannah is asked to find her and bring her home.  And the setting is great: it’s hard to go wrong when you set a mystery in the the steamy, fetid atmosphere of Florida.  

No, what’s wrong with Gone is that it was written from a woman’s perspective by a man obsessed with breasts.   

Seriously. 

The first time I noticed it was when Hannah, wanting to perk herself up, dresses up and checks herself out in the mirror. She delights in looking at herself as she "spills out of her favorite 34D bra.” The sight gets makes her get “teary-eyed and smile, because she, in her own mind, is about as shapely as an ironing board balancing two peas.” 

I have yet to meet the woman who gets teary-eyed at the sight of herself “spilling out” of a bra. The sight might well bring a man to tears—as a woman, I wouldn’t presume to know. But to a woman? “Spilling out” just means it’s time to buy a bigger bra.

Several pages later, a gay friend says to her, “’I’ve never opened a Playboy magazine in my life, but, I swear, Hannah, even I love your tits.’”

A bit later, she interviews an older woman who had been victimized by the guy who may be responsible for the young woman’s disappearance. She sees “what might have been a Chantelle bra, raspberry lace and glitter, draped over a velvet divan.”  The older woman, who starts out being hostile, eventually warms to Hannah, pressing a grocery bag on the younger woman as a gift; inside is the very same bra. “The fact that Mrs. Whitney and I wore the same bra size—34D—had helped, too. It created a sisterly feeling that is often the reward when women share private matters they wouldn’t entrust to a man.”

Oh, where to start with this one. First, older women don’t usually leave their bras out where guests can see them. Second, they never—you can take this one to the bank—present a used, unwashed bra to another woman as a gift. Third, the “fact” that the witness and Hannah wore the same bra size would be unknown to either woman, as women—and this may come as a surprise to men reading this--don’t exchange that information upon meeting each other.  And fourth, sharing the same bra size would not create a “sisterly feeling.”  I’m still laughing about this one. The only scenario in which I could imagine women bonding over sharing the same bra size is if they met in a plastic surgeon’s waiting room prior to augmentation.

(Much, much later, Hannah finds herself in danger and distracts the bad guy by unbuttoning her third button, “enough for him to see me spilling out of Mrs. Whitney’s 34 D Chantelle bra.” I’m hoping she at least laundered Mrs Whitney’s bra before wearing it. But again—spilling out? Clearly, they don’t wear the same bra size: 34 D may have fit Mrs. Whitney, but Hannah needs to go in for a fitting.) 

But wait: there’s more! A lawyer changes into a satin blouse which reveals “her bouncing breasts when she walked.” Another character has “grapefruit-sized implants.” The list goes on and on.

Randy Wayne White needs to forsake this experiment and go back to writing from a guy’s point of view. He can still include nonsense like this, if he thinks it would help move his plot along. For instance, he could describe Doc Ford getting “teary-eyed” as he looks at himself in a mirror, “spilling out” of an athletic supporter that’s too small. Or interviewing a witness, where he sees dirty boxers thrown over the back of a couch—only to find that the witness made him a gift of that same pair of dirty boxers. All the while sharing that brotherly bond that comes when two guys wear the same size underwear. 

Unbelievable.

Randy Wayne White: living up to his first name.

This Bright River, by Patrick Somerville (Reagan Arthur; Little, Brown; $24.99)

Patrick Somerville sure can write. So well, in fact, that I didn’t even mind—or notice, for that matter—that nothing much happened in the 450-page This Bright River until the last 100 pages. Actually, just as I was starting to wonder how I would review the book in a mystery and thriller blog, a bad guy finally appeared.

Upon his release from prison, Ben Hanson moves to his late uncle’s house in St. Helens, Wisconsin. There he tries to woo Lauren Sheehan, a woman he’d known in high school.  Ben has a past, obviously, and Lauren does as well. Ben’s history is more obvious; drug problems led to the arson that landed him in jail. But Lauren has seen her share of violence, as well, and it makes wooing her a difficult task indeed.

 Living in his old hometown makes Ben curious about his family. Years earlier, Ben’s cousin froze to death in the wilds of Wisconsin.  The family has always been troubled about the circumstances of that death. In remembering conversations, searching through files, and visiting the places of his youth, Ben finally uncovers secrets that his family would have preferred he not know.  

  I hate when people tell me their dreams, and I particularly hate when authors include dreams in novels.  Other people’s dreams are boring, and when they go on for pages, they are excruciating.  This book includes quite a few, and they are the one flaw in an otherwise spellbinding story.  I skipped them in protest, and found that I could still follow the action with no trouble. Somerville’s descriptions are lyrical, and his characters were compelling.  This is a beautifully written story.

Creole Belle, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster; $27.99)

It’s been a long time since I read one of James Lee Burke’s novels starring Iberia Sheriff’s Deputy Dave Robicheaux.  Creole Belle reminded me why I had quit. His setting is beautiful, his characters memorable, and his writing elegant. But his plots, to put it quite bluntly, are a mess.  I have always felt that if he could limit himself to fewer story lines, his books would be so much stronger. This latest is no different: he’s got a contract killer, a long lost daughter, a Nazi war criminal, evil oil company execs, extortionists trying to collect on an old debt, an immoral televangelist, a sadistic artist, a cruel albino (who someone tries to stuff into a tanning bed), a Creole singer who may or may not be just a morphine dream, Vietnam memories, a nanny-cam used for nefarious purposes—the list goes on and on.

No one sees Creole singer Tee Jolie Melton when she visits Dave Robicheaux, in the hospital where he’s recovering from being shot. In fact, no one even believes that she was there at all.  But now she’s missing, along with her younger sister.  Clete Purcel, stalwart sidekick that he is, agrees to help Dave look into her disappearance. Meanwhile—and this is where it all started to get confusing —some mopes visit Clete and tell him he still owes money on a debt he paid off years before. The marker was found in an old safe. Then someone shoots the mopes, and the shooter might be the Clete’s long-lost daughter. The mopes are somehow connected to a sadistic artist, the son (and perhaps grandson) of a Holocaust victim who uses a hateful word to describe Jews.  As the plot meanders down each new twist, it becomes harder and harder to remember what the book is actually about.

Underneath the fictional plot and myriad side plots is a true crime novel: the rape and pillage of the state of Louisiana by oil companies who don’t care about the environment, the people, or the way of life, but who have the support of the people who pay the stiffest price.  “Let’s face it,” Burke writes. “It’s hard to sell the virtues of poverty to people who have nothing to eat. In Louisiana, which has the highest rate of illiteracy in the union . . .few people worry about the downside of casinos, drive-through daiquiri windows, tobacco depots, and environmental degradation washing away the southern rim of the state. . .working class people display bumper stickers that read GLOBAL WARMING IS BULLSHIT.

The characters are familiar and charming as ever, although Dave Robicheaux’s praise of his lawyer/novelist daughter, Alafair, comes on a little strong, particularly for anyone who knows that Alafair Burke, Burke’s real-life daughter, is a lawyer/novelist. As always, Clete is my favorite character.  In this latest book, the lonely Clete falls in lust—twice.  This is an amazing accomplishment for a man who, when one of the women shows up at his house, describes himself by saying, “I’m an awkward guy. I have a way of messing up things. I’ve got a bad track record with relationships . . . I’m over the hill. I break the springs in bathroom scales. My doc says there’s enough cholesterol in my system to clog a storm drain.  .  .I’ve got a sheet longer than most perps’. I capped a federal informant. There are some government guys who’ve got it in for me because I fought on the leftist side in El Salvador.’” (Why do I hear Joe E. Brown saying, “Well, nobody’s perfect!”?!)

When the smoke has cleared and the body count totaled, what’s left is Burke’s tribute to a way of life that no longer exists, one that was leveled by Katrina and poisoned by the BP spill.