Book Review: Second Son by Lee Child

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You know I am a big fan of Jack Reacher from Lee Child and I have had this one on my Kindle for sometime now but only just got round to reading it!

The book opens in Paris with Reacher's 90 year old grandfather about to die and the neighbours trying to reach his daughter, Reacher's mother Josie, who is in transit to her husbands next posting.

This is a retrospective taking us back to Reacher at 13 years of age and he, his Father a Captain in the US Marines his older brother Joe and their mother Josie have just arrived in Okinawa.

Reacher is already on the way to being oversized unlike Mr Cruise, who at 13 was probably only about 80 lbs and was never much more than that, sorry I'm digressing....

Young Recher quickly finds that the local American kids have a hierarchy and a unique way of welcoming new kids on the block, but as we find in his later life, he is not one to pay the piper and sets about dismantling the local gang at the some time as deducing who framed his brother over a set of missing school test answer sheet and solving the riddle of the missing codex book that could see his father painting kerbstones white as a private soldier.

This sets the scene for his later life as an investigator in the MP's and maybe tells us why he joined the Military Police rather than the Marines, like his father all in all a good introduction to young reacher.

My only issue with this was what appeared to be a formatting issue at the beginning of chapter 10 in that Reacher was having a conversation with a girl he met on the beach and whom he exchanges kisses with and who he finds has only been on the base for a couple of weeks longer than he has and the established kids are also making her life a bit rough.  The layout goes from the normal spread across the full page to a line by line conversational piece, as each one speaks in three of four word sentences and looks completely awful between two normal passages, this happens in one other place in the book.  It may just be me, but I found it slightly off putting*, but still thoroughly enjoyed the story.

Editing for Kindle: 4 out of 5
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Page Count: 40
Front cover Art Work: 5 out of 5
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5

This was the editing I mentioned, as I say, it's probably just me overthinking it, but I don't think it needed it like this.  It does appear in  other books when the dialogue is running between two characters  rather than the story been told in a third person narrative but I can't recall seeing it quite like this in a Reacher novel before and to me, between the two normal passages it just didn't sit right!