There is a sub-genre of crime fiction where the hero is a rugged, manly person recently discharged from the military, who despite his professed desire to live a simple, blameless life surrounded by kittens, rainbows and ponies, gets drawn inescapably into investigating some bloody civilian crime, which is not a patch on the crimes he investigated when he was in the military, but somehow still takes him 500 pages to solve. Three notable specimens of this type are Jack Reacher, Daniel McEvoy and Cormoran Strike. All three are over 6ft tall, stacked and brooding. But each has his own charm. Here is a summary of each one's first appearance, for the sake of comparison:
Jack Reacher first appears in Lee Child's Killing Floor. Having recently left the Military Police, after a lifetime of army bases man and boy, he decides to become a Hobo, and listens to lots of country music travelling around the USA on public transport and paying for things in cash. He gets off a bus one morning in the middle of nowhere, and walks into a small and inconsequential town in Georgia that happens to be in the throes of a tidal wave of inexplicable crime. In fact, he is immediately arrested for a shooting that happened the previous evening, because he is a stranger, and people in small towns think strangers are bad. This is not a bad development for Reacher, though, because it enables him to meet Finlay, the local detective who will be his slightly dimmer old sidekick, and Roscoe, sexy woman cop who looks good in shirts, jeans and uniforms as well as out of them. She also occasionally says something clever, but is mostly there as an excuse for sex scenes. The plot involves some satisfying twists, but the revelations are so heavily signposted you may well work out what is going to happen a good fifty pages before it actually does. This is annoying. Reacher himself is an interesting character. He is a distillation of all things masculine; tall, strong, martial arts expertise bordering on the supernatural and a love of large guns. Interestingly, he is not that great at driving, but this seems to be a case of ticking the 'character must have at least one weakness' box. He knows everything there is to know about combat and anger and death, and he is never surprised. He has feelings, but they are always secondary to his instincts, his effortless ability to distinguish right from wrong and willingness to act on that distinction by braining people with a blackjack and creating rivers of the blood of his enemies. The book itself is not a particularly traumatic read - horrible things are done by good and bad guys alike, but the characters are cardboard cut-outs that can only elicit so much sympathy in their passing. Overall, it is not a bad read, if you have a large vat of willing suspension of disbelief lying around. And as an unintentional bonus, the fact that it was written in 1997 makes it amusingly dated - Reacher delights in skipping around leaving no trace of his identity which is somewhat harder to do in the age of facebook and ubiquitous CCTV. But I digress.
Daniel McEvoy appears in Eoin Colfer's 2011 Plugged. The title refers to his recently acquired hair implants, carried out by his friend, dodgy doctor Zeb. McEvoy has recently left the Irish army, where he worked on various UN peacekeeping missions, and acquired some serious mental scars which he does not discuss in detail. The main advantage McE has over Reacher is that he has a sense of humour, which runs through his first-person narrative like a seam of gold, making it very easy to ignore whether or not things are believable. The plot is as tightly constructed and gloriously twisted as Killing Floor's, but the characters are far more believable, despite their stereotypic qualities. In fact, they are constantly pushing against the boundaries of their own stereotypes, and constructing images and identities for themselves which are fictional but they are willing to defend quite viciously. The driving force of the novel is itself wonderfully quirky: McEvoy discovers that Zeb has gone missing, and the same day his occasional girlfriend Connie is found murdered outside the nightclub where they work. While trying to find out what happened to Connie, McEvoy has the constant nagging voice of Zeb in his head, complaining about how McEvoy is not looking for him. McEvoy has picked up some skills in the army, both physical and strategic, but he is reluctant to use them, and though he engages in violence he does not exactly revel in it. In fact, more often than not the sage advice he follows was given to him by his boozy psychoanalyst, to whom he was assigned after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. That combined with his concern about the hair plugs gives the impression that McEvoy is trying to better himself, that he would like to have friends and fit into society rather than being a tough loner, and that makes him sympathetic. At the same time, he is not shy of a bit of sarcasm, and never soppy.
Cormoran Strike is a different breed to the previous two creatures. First appearing in Robert Galbraith's (aka. J.K. Rowling's) The Cuckoo's Calling, he is an x-soldier, discharged because he lost part of his leg in an explosion in Afghanistan. This is a recurring theme in the plot, as he has to do all the daring things a private investigator has to do with the added challenge of his prosthesis, which often causes him trouble. Like McEvoy, Strike is not one to romanticise the military. But although the book has many humorous moments, Cormoran is a brooding Heathcliff character who takes himself exceptionally seriously. He is the son of a rockstar and deceased groupie, which both helps and hinders his investigative career. It is unclear what made him decide to become a detective, but he is reminiscent of the BBC's rendering of Dr Watson in Sherlock. And what is most interesting about The Cuckoo's Calling is really the way the character of the deceased victim, Lula Landry, emerges and is modified by each revelation in Strike's investigation of her death. Strike is of less central importance than McEvoy or Reacher, because this is a third-person narrative, and he shares point-of-view character status with his assistant, Robin. Nevertheless, an engaging hero is useful for a successful detective novel, and Strike is engaging. The mystery of his past, which he is not too keen on discussing, unfolds beside the murder investigation, and the fact that his detective agency is almost bankrupt and he has personally hit rock bottom gives him all the more motivation to pursue this case. The prose may get a little Rowling-esque at times, but it is still certainly better written than Killing Floor, and somewhat more substantial than Plugged, though it lacks the easy humour of the latter.
All in all, Daniel McEvoy is a bit too unbelievably calm, not to mention glib in times of stress, Cormoran Strike is a big brooding baby, but Jack Reacher tops the lot by being a murderous psychopath who coats his killing sprees with a veneer of justice.
Jack Reacher first appears in Lee Child's Killing Floor. Having recently left the Military Police, after a lifetime of army bases man and boy, he decides to become a Hobo, and listens to lots of country music travelling around the USA on public transport and paying for things in cash. He gets off a bus one morning in the middle of nowhere, and walks into a small and inconsequential town in Georgia that happens to be in the throes of a tidal wave of inexplicable crime. In fact, he is immediately arrested for a shooting that happened the previous evening, because he is a stranger, and people in small towns think strangers are bad. This is not a bad development for Reacher, though, because it enables him to meet Finlay, the local detective who will be his slightly dimmer old sidekick, and Roscoe, sexy woman cop who looks good in shirts, jeans and uniforms as well as out of them. She also occasionally says something clever, but is mostly there as an excuse for sex scenes. The plot involves some satisfying twists, but the revelations are so heavily signposted you may well work out what is going to happen a good fifty pages before it actually does. This is annoying. Reacher himself is an interesting character. He is a distillation of all things masculine; tall, strong, martial arts expertise bordering on the supernatural and a love of large guns. Interestingly, he is not that great at driving, but this seems to be a case of ticking the 'character must have at least one weakness' box. He knows everything there is to know about combat and anger and death, and he is never surprised. He has feelings, but they are always secondary to his instincts, his effortless ability to distinguish right from wrong and willingness to act on that distinction by braining people with a blackjack and creating rivers of the blood of his enemies. The book itself is not a particularly traumatic read - horrible things are done by good and bad guys alike, but the characters are cardboard cut-outs that can only elicit so much sympathy in their passing. Overall, it is not a bad read, if you have a large vat of willing suspension of disbelief lying around. And as an unintentional bonus, the fact that it was written in 1997 makes it amusingly dated - Reacher delights in skipping around leaving no trace of his identity which is somewhat harder to do in the age of facebook and ubiquitous CCTV. But I digress.
Daniel McEvoy appears in Eoin Colfer's 2011 Plugged. The title refers to his recently acquired hair implants, carried out by his friend, dodgy doctor Zeb. McEvoy has recently left the Irish army, where he worked on various UN peacekeeping missions, and acquired some serious mental scars which he does not discuss in detail. The main advantage McE has over Reacher is that he has a sense of humour, which runs through his first-person narrative like a seam of gold, making it very easy to ignore whether or not things are believable. The plot is as tightly constructed and gloriously twisted as Killing Floor's, but the characters are far more believable, despite their stereotypic qualities. In fact, they are constantly pushing against the boundaries of their own stereotypes, and constructing images and identities for themselves which are fictional but they are willing to defend quite viciously. The driving force of the novel is itself wonderfully quirky: McEvoy discovers that Zeb has gone missing, and the same day his occasional girlfriend Connie is found murdered outside the nightclub where they work. While trying to find out what happened to Connie, McEvoy has the constant nagging voice of Zeb in his head, complaining about how McEvoy is not looking for him. McEvoy has picked up some skills in the army, both physical and strategic, but he is reluctant to use them, and though he engages in violence he does not exactly revel in it. In fact, more often than not the sage advice he follows was given to him by his boozy psychoanalyst, to whom he was assigned after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. That combined with his concern about the hair plugs gives the impression that McEvoy is trying to better himself, that he would like to have friends and fit into society rather than being a tough loner, and that makes him sympathetic. At the same time, he is not shy of a bit of sarcasm, and never soppy.All in all, Daniel McEvoy is a bit too unbelievably calm, not to mention glib in times of stress, Cormoran Strike is a big brooding baby, but Jack Reacher tops the lot by being a murderous psychopath who coats his killing sprees with a veneer of justice.
