Rating: 
Summary: A great thriller, but...
Review: I won't recap the storyline; that is easily found elsewhere. Lee Child supposedly has his own website; but when you try it, you get only a blank page. So, the quibble I wished to post there ends up here instead. I didn't realize until reading other reader reviews that Child is an Englishman writing American-style thrillers. Maybe that explains the stylistic lapses that annoy me in his work. By the time I reached this 3rd book in the series, I was already tired of them.For example: sooner or later, everyone says, "Blah-blah-blah, right?" Sooner or later, everyone says (something like) "Hell are you doing?" for "What the hell are you doing?" (you'd think at least someone would get it right). And, sooner or later, everyone (including the author himself) says, "Time to time" which means nothing in itself. What they mean is "FROM time to time." I don't know where Mr. Child got the idea that everyone in America speaks the same way, but the next time he's here he should listen more closely. But aside from this, Lee Child's books are excellant thrillers, second only to those of Dennis Lehayne.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun but deeply flawed
Review: This book was a pleasant read, but it was deeply flawed by numerous glaring factual improbabilities or impossibilities. For example: (a) the villain dumps stock of a closely held private company on "the Exchange," although only stock of public companies can be sold on a stock exchange, (b) the company's bankers are blissfully ignorant of the company's financial situation and panic like frightened rabbits as soon as its stock takes a momentary dip, (c) developers are apparently prepared to give the villain millions, on a few days notice, for real estate on which there are 500 existing homes, (d) the hero bursts, unarmed, into a room containing two armed drug dealers, knocks them out with his bare hands and steals one of their guns (please don't try this at home); (e) the villain has tortured and killed scores of people in his office at the World Trade Center, taking the bodies down the freight elevator in packing boxes, without apparently once raising any suspicions from, say, the janitorial staff, (f) the hero stops a bullet, fired at close range, with his massive chest muscles, and so on. Authors working in the thriller/mystery genre often need to take a certain amount of poetic license with the facts of life to make their stories work, but Mr. Child has taken so much here that Tripwire is only a step or two above a comic book and dances perilously close to insulting the reader's intelligence.
Rating:
Summary: Not compelling enough to read again
Review: I nice yarn with lovely areas of suspense. But a little to "American" for me. If you are after a simple thriller this is for you.
Rating:
Summary: THE OTHER TWO WERE BETTER!!!!!
Review: This is my third Lee Child book, I think the other two were much better. Jack Reacher is again the hero. He is trying to find out what happend to Victor Hobie. Did he did die in Vietnam or not? If he did who is making all the bad things happen? Parts of the book were great and parts were very, very slow moving. In one place it took two pages to tell out Hobie went to bed. There were pages of airline travel to many different places. Most all the book is about the Stone family, Chester and Mayilyn but in the end nothing is said about what happened to them. They just are not there any more. Shame, shame Mr. Child. I found myself scanning several pages because they were just talk or thinking which did not amount to anything. I hope the next book is as good as the first two.
Rating:
Summary: Muscular Hero, Evil Villain
Review: My second Jack Reacher novel. He is a muscular, straight-forward hero pitted against a truly nasty bad-guy. A fairly original plot, good action, and crisp dialogue moves the story along. I plan to keep reading Lee Child, the two books I've read are a cut above most of the action books on the market.
Rating:
Summary: I'm wired!
Review: This was my 3rd Jack Reacher book. Couldnt put it down. It's a little more sadistic whan I like but I hung in there. I knew Reacher would win out! What a guy! Was afraid it would turn into a romance novel but it seemed to be ok. This is an outsanding read series. Thrilling. Found myself moving around a lot in tension. Sometimes it gets way over the top but will order the next book in line. Exciting reading.
Rating:
Summary: Heavy on the Sadism
Review: I love the Jack Reacher novels. Having said that, I was less than thrilled with Tripwire. In previous novels, Child uses a few deft scenes to describe his vicious, soulless villains. In Tripwire, Child structured his story in such a way that a lot of time had to be spent with the villain. Therefore, there are numerous scenes of sadistic cruelty. Their repetition, while stylishly written, left me feeling fatigued and frankly bored. Yes, we found out the villain is bad. A bit later, we realized he was very, very bad. By the time Child convinced me the bad guy was very, very, very bad, I no longer cared and simply wanted the character put out of my misery. Having lodged this complaint, however, I found the overall plot wonderfully complex and entertaining. I still think Jack Reacher is the finest hero since Travis McGee.
Rating:
Summary: Very good.
Review: A suspenseful mystery novel, Child teases the reader with up to three parallel stories, all waiting to make a huge collision at the incredible ending. Reading it, one can see how Child gradually changes his own writing style, a sign of fantastic versatility. He develops characters as easily as any writer and gives background as well as Crichton. Descriptive yet not too dragged out, the book lures the reader in. A sure read!
Rating: 
Summary: Lacking Suspense
Review: I had to force myself to finish this book. The cheapskate side of me did not want to throw money down the drain. There was a profound lack of intrigue and suspense for a "suspense thriller." The characters lacked depth and were very one dimensional. The antagonist of the story has a hook--I find this to be very comical. Jack Reacher is a character without any real human flaws--every pseudo flaw the author tries to introduce is quickly rationalized or explained into niceness--thus loosing the attempted effect. Practicaly every other chapter described how big and manly Jack is and how small, and petite his lady partner is. This is a "Harlequin" style story for men. The story did not inspire me to care about what happens to any of the characters--which is critical in a suspense novel.
Rating:
Summary: Enthralled, yet disapointed.
Review: I'm a big fan of Lee Child. His first book, "Killing Floor", was an excellent read. His second novel, although not as good as his first, was still a book I couldn't put down until I had finished it. However, on reading his third book, I was extremely disapointed to find that Lee Child seem's to have gone all "Hollywood" and "mainstream" in that he seems to be reaching for the female readership at the expense of his loyal male following, whom his first two books were aimed at. Jack Reacher is Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry. A Charles Bronson or Arnold Swarzennegger. Alas just as Swarzenegger sold out in order to reach the female audience with his kiddie films etc, Lee Childs has turned parts of his third book into a slushy, soppy romance. Not only do we have the obliqitory "Hollywood" sex scenes but the excitement and anticipation of this action thriller stops and starts because action hero Jack Reacher can't stop thinking about his girlfriend whom he falls in love with. This is extremely disapointing. It really spoils the book and dilutes the main character. In the first book Jack Reacher was a "John Rambo", a drifter with no emotional attachments wandering from town to town trying to make some sense of his life and his past. In this book, Lee Child has lost his sense of direction with his character. I hope that Lee child doesn't start borrowing his mother's bedtime reading otherwise Jack Reacher might start changing nappies, denying his masculinity and want to search for his feminine side. Worse, I fear that Lee Child may turn into a male version of Babara Cartland.
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