Don't Know Jack: Hunting Lee Child's Jack Reacher (The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series Book 1)

I know what you are thinking because I was thinking it also. Any chance to read more Jack Reacher is worth a try so I bought and read this book. The first point is that Jack Reacher does not appear in this book. Some of the characters are resurrected from "The Killing Floor" and the action takes place about 15 years after the the events in Lee Child's novel. It could have been a clever idea and I wanted to give it three stars just because it was a clever idea. The writing is just plain bad. It is a mess and preposterous at the same time. It did get me to read "The Killing Floor" again and the contrast between Lee Child's skill and Diane Capri's is stark. My advice to you is to skip this book and go back to the Library and check out "The Killing Floor" instead. You won't regret it.

As a big Jack Reacher fan I was attracted to the title and expected that Reacher would actually appear somehow in the story. He might have made a brief appearance at the end, but only as a shadowy figure who really played no significant part. Otherwise, the mystery is mediocre and the characters are quickly forgettable. There are a bunch of books in this series, all cleverly using Jack's name in the title, but I decided I wouldn't fall for a second disappointment.

This book is appalling! The author tries to rip-off the characters created by Lee Child in his book "Killing Floor". She makes a mess of it and the characters she created are superficial and poorly depicted. The plot is nonsensical and I abandoned this book early on. If you enjoyed the Jack Reacher series, don't read this book!

I've been a big fan of the Jack Reacher books for some time but this has been my first time enjoying one of the off shoots from the Jack Reacher series. I'm about halfway through this book and I like the plot and am starting to understand the characters but I do wish the author had hired a better editor - there are some random grammatical errors here and there that that are very annoying to word nerds, many of whom are avid readers. There aren't enough of them to prevent me from enjoying the book overall but they're like nails on a chalkboard when they pop up. Ms. Capri, if you're reading this, please hire a better editor for future books.**Update** I'm updating this now that I've finished the book. The ending was very unsatisfying. Without including spoilers, I will simply say that there were many unanswered questions regarding the case the detectives solved in this book. I have no problem with the unresolved questions about Jack Reacher since that is the premise of the series but there were at least a half a dozen loose ends that were not tied up at the end of the book. Not what I expected from a series endorsed by Lee Child.

First we get Tiny Tom Cruse as Jack Reacher and now we get a couple of dull FBI agents trying to pretend they’re actually in a Jack Reacher book. This tale was muddled from the get-go, with confusing, boring action (or lack thereof) and regular references to Reacher so we’d know he might possibly maybe by chance show up in the story, but he really didn’t. Or maybe he did but I sleep-read that part...I did keep dozing off. I actually have a lot of respect for authors, but I don’t think this is a book anyone would miss if it hadn’t been written.

This book, a spin-off of the Jack Reacher “universe,” like most spinoffs, looks to capitalize off its predecessor... but like most spinoffs it doesn’t capture any of the “soul” of the original, (though the “unstoppable force of nature” Reacher series “soul” is a tad contrived to begin with.)The writing was workmanlike, and the author repeatedly has the protagonist merely following the only, obvious, path offered, with very little actual thinking or problem solving on her part. She’s led along by the nose, with convenient prods, pushes, and hard shoves from the shadowy sidelines whenever she would otherwise need to actually think and investigate. The constant rushing about between appointments she’s been given to receive the next shove, never more than a few hours in any location, preventing thorough examination of clues or character development, was just absurd.The result isn’t worth buying, except perhaps as a “free” read in Kindle Unlimited.

I kept hoping something would happen, perhaps this is a prelude to something else from this author? The story itself would have been better (to me) if Jack Reacher were just left out, it had very little to do with that character and he never makes a personal entry into the story.

Jack is not in the book. Often mentioned never heard from. A mediocre book that tries unsuccessfully to piggy back on the success of the Jack Reacher. Honestly, if the author had been so desperate to tie Jack Reacher into the plot it might have had a chance to be a decent novel.

I was sign posted to this by my kindle recommendations, so as a bit of a Reacherphile I thought it was worth a punt at the price. So what do i think? Well as the great man himself says in The Hard Way, "I just don't know". Obviously I wanted to read it to catch up with Reacher, get further insights into what he does in his down time and to revisit characters from Reacher books of old, but on this score I was disappointed. The hunt for Reacher starts off as the premise for the story, but I felt that pretty soon this had been subjugated to a side issue and he was placed on the back burner. The visits to Roscoe and Finlay from the Killing Floor were hardly worth the effort and gave no new insights, except for the implied belief that Roscoe's fifteen year old daughter is in fact Reacher's (haven't we just been through this in Never Gone Back, only better). Add this to the glaring inaccuracies with the Reacher back story (Reacher's father is described in a photo as a giant, whereas I'm sure he is referred to by Child as being of normal size), the annoying presumption from the main characters that Reacher is a bad guy, and the fact that it tried too hard in places to be a clone of Killing Floor (there is a scene in Eno's diner where they are taken down by two officers from the GHP, and their reactions are copycats of Reacher's). On this score I wouldn't recommend it to a Reacher fan, better off waiting to see what Child has up his sleeve next. Having read this though I do wonder if the FBI hunt for Reacher is going to be woven into the story of the next Reacher novel, having read the blurb for this, as there does seem to be a connection, and I wonder if the two worlds are going to collide as a finale for Reacher, finding out that Roscoe's daughter is his daughter and settling into happy retirement in Margrave??? On the other hand if you take Reacher out of the equation you are left with a quite entertaining and enjoyable thriller that plods at times but usually maintains a good pace. So if you are looking for a good addition to your Reacher collection, you won't find it here, but as a stand alone crime thriller it passes a few hours reasonably painlessly. Might just buy Get Back Jack to see if there is any improvement.

I was a bit sceptical at first when this popped up on my Amazon recommended list, as any Lee Child fan will know you just don't mess with Jack Reacher and get away with it! A review from Lee Child put my mind at rest so I decided to give it a go. I enjoyed the sample I downloaded so much that I immediately bought the full kindle book. The characters are engaging, they grow on you throughout the story and it was great to revisit previous Reacher characters. The reader is kept on the edge of their seat, there are so many twists and turns. It's fast paced, engaging and enjoyable to read. There are some down sides though. *Spoiler* The basis of the story is that the FBI agents are sent to find Reacher but there is no reason given why. This doesn't seem to bother either agent just as the fact that they, unsurprisingly, get no closer to finding him. What they find instead is crime scene after crime scene on what is a mostly unrelated topic. The finding Reacher part of the story feels like a flimsy excuse to write a crime novel. It works in that it gets the agents to the right people and places but it the gets put on the back burner. My other issue is that certain points don't seem to have been resolved, such as who got Sylvia the job in Margrave? If it really was Finley, then why? It helps the story move along but I like to have all the answers when I finish reading novels. I have seen that there are others in this series so maybe the answers are further down the line. I will be reading them to find out.

Just read Don't Know Jack, mainly because it has a link to Jack Reacher which, I think is probably a bit of a gimmick. If you've read all the Lee Child books featuring Reacher, this one takes you back to one of the locations, and ties it in very well. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book, even though you know Reacher will not be found. Nevertheless the story did keep me interested all the way through, and I think the characters are very well depicted. Particularly like the relationship between the two main ones. I've already downloaded the next one in the series, and look forward to reading it. Looking at the other Capri titles, I think I've probably become a fan.

I really enjoyed the characters of Otto and Gaspar. I think the premise of the storyline was very good too. Trying to link the crimes occurring to Reacher didn't always make sense to me, but that may have been my subconscious trying to protect Jack?!

The frustrating thing about this book is that it had so much potential, but then didn't fulfill it.Another angle on the Reacher stories, where he is essentially the bad guy rather than the hero, at least in the eyes of the protagonists, could have been fascinating. But this book is essentially a ridiculous plot, with the link to the Reacher stories so tangential that it feels like it's a marketing device for a book that otherwise wouldn't sell. I should have guessed this would be the case given who the FBI sent after him - one person less than half Reacher's weight, and another who can barely run because of old wounds.I might read another book in the series, but only if it's written by another author, because the Chaley's Angels structure, with the offscreen boss pulling the strings from one chase scene to another, just didn't work for me.