Review: Safe Enough by Lee Child

Although these are “Crime Stories by the Author of Jack Reacher,” they don’t feature Reacher. But that’s not really the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that these short stories are essentially written as jokes with a punchline. You get a little bit of story, a little bit of character building, and then, after about 15 pages, the story comes to an abrupt end with some sort of small surprise, to the extent that you can almost here the “ba-dum-tish.” Many of the surprises are predictable, and even the ones that aren’t don’t leave much of an impression.

There are a few stories in here that stand out: “Me & Mr Rafferty,” “The Bone-Headed League,” and “Section 7 (a) (Operational)” are a notch above in terms of writing, story, originality, and the twist ending. The rest are largely forgettable.

Rating: 3 stars