If you’re looking for a simple, brisk thriller, look no further! ‘Killing Floor’, the first novel in the Jack Reacher series, is an easy, fast-paced read that’s sure to brighten up a dull, lazy weekend.

Jack Reacher, 36-year-old former military policeman and a blond hulk of a man standing 6’5” tall and broad in proportion, finds himself charged with murder in a quiet town. As the plot thickens and the bodies pile up, you wonder how Reacher will extricate himself – and others – from the mess. Yet, at the same time, you are sure that he will. Reacher is your quintessential tough guy: intelligent, intimidating, unflappable. This is a guy who knows what he’s doing. A guy who has Plan B ready in case Plan A fails, and will work out Plan C in the blink of an eye should Plan B go down the drain. A guy you’re confident can calmly take on a multitude of armed baddies and beat them with one hand tied behind his back.

One thing that irks is the unending staccato style of narration. The best I can say about it is that it possibly complements the briskness of the genre and might work in a movie. In fact, the style kept bringing to mind the old Westerns: the taciturn loner riding slowly into town, silent except for the occasional laconic drawl, perpetually leaning back with his feet propped up and his hat over his eyes save when effortlessly, casually, shooting from the hip to lay low the baddies. Only, in the Westerns, the strong, silent cowboy wouldn’t talk much so staccato speech would work well. In ‘Killing Floor’, our ex-cop narrates the entire story, which means there are 525 pages written predominantly in this vein:

‘We found the right street. Found the right house. Decent place. Well looked after. Neat and clean. A tiny one-storey. Small yard, single-car garage. Narrow gate in the wire fence. We went through. Rang the bell.’

‘I put my finger in the little loop. Pulled the box out. It was heavy. I handed it to Finlay. We ran back to the rosewood office. Laid the box on the rosewood desk. Opened it up. It was full of old yellowing paper.’

Yes, it’s an overdose of sentence fragments and short, choppy sentences that can well come across as bordering on the juvenile and which begin to pall very soon. In some places, it looks quite unnatural: ‘There was a solid mob of college kids bearing down on us. Aiming to fly out of a gate further down.’

The monotonous staccato also prevents the reader from building an emotional connection with the characters. I couldn’t feel for and with the protagonists like I usually do. The brutal murders left me cold. A really good novel pulls in the reader and touches the soul – you grieve when the protagonists grieve, you feel their joy and their terror. A gory crime scene makes your stomach turn. Reading ‘Killing Floor’, I felt uncharacteristically aloof; this style of narration clearly does nothing to touch the soul. The intermittent presence of longer sentences was a relief: a breath of cool, fresh air in a muggy desert of choppy sentences and fragments. Mark you, I have nothing against the use of clipped speech in literature. Woven in judiciously, it works a treat. But the operative word here is ‘judiciously’. Like the judicious use of asafoetida in dal tadka. A little bit enhances the flavour delightfully. Too much and the dal will reek.

This notwithstanding, I was hooked to the book. All things considered, Lee Child is a good storyteller and reels out a ripping yarn. The story had me gripped despite the narrative style grating on me, and I also enjoyed the little details about the different kinds of guns and various procedures (won’t go into those – spoilers!) that featured in the story. I’m looking forward to reading more of Child’s work, hopefully with improved narration in the other Jack Reacher novels!