English Tuition Bolton Manchester: Lee Child’s Model Opening to ‘Make Me’.

”Moving a guy as big as Keever wasn’t easy. It was like trying  to wrestle a king-size mattress off a waterbed. So they buried him close to the house. Which made sense anyway. The harvest was still a month away, and a disturbance in a field would show up from the air. And they would use the air, for a guy like Keever. They would use search planes, and helicopters, and maybe even drones…

…Only one thing went wrong, and it happened right then.

The evening train came through five hours late. ”

 This is my first Jack Reacher novel and I loved the terse, witty, ironic style. Lee Child’s ultra competent hero is comfortingly indestructible and relishes the  challenge of any body count in any sort of  skirmish!

 

I enjoyed the energetic precision of Child’s hugely successful thriller-formula which feels natural and makes everyday chores seem unnecessary until the book is finished. Child’s narrative doesn’t let you go! (I have the new book about the creation of Make Me, which is fascinating, but really all you have to do is read him, to savour the well honed techniques and skills)! Look at the action laden first sentence,’ ‘Moving a guy as big as Keever wasn’t easy.” It has immediate  rhythm and the first word is an action verb. It installs us right inside the predicament from the point of view of those with the ‘moving’ problem. The challenge of the predicament is exacerbated by revelation that the ‘evening train came through five hours late.’  Lee Child beautifully compresses his opening to give a map for the rest of the novel.

 

Lee Child’s opening acts as a prologue to the narrative and scatters casual clues as to the nature and content of the thriller. Make Me is Child’s twentieth Reacher novel and shows an easeful confidence in the delivery. Aside from the denoument which is certainly 18 certificate,(horribly disturbing),  I loved the pace and Shane-like heroism of the invincible protagonist, Jack Reacher.  One good man against the world: against the macabre ‘they’ in the second line and even against the probably law agencies represented by the ‘they’ in the fourth line! Competing ‘others’ against the outsider, vigilante figure of Jack Reacher himself.   

 

Here’s Mis en scene perfection: ”Moving a guy as big as Keever wasn’t easy.”  We guess that the ‘involved’ point of view is presumably that of the killers and we are faced with their problem which becomes Reacher’s problem, as guess what, he  was on that late, ‘wrong’  train. The reader is enmeshed from the beginning. 

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The murderers’ struggle is a cold, practical one, not a hint of guilt exists.” ..a disturbance in a field.” The victim is dehumanised. We sense the geography of the event is part of the novel’s ‘problem’ too and the word ‘harvest’ seems both ironic and sinister. This is not happy pastoral! No easy going farmers tedning to their much loved crops.

 

Notice how the passage also mimics the workings of  clinical minds seeking solutions: ”Which made sense anyway. ” The killers are self congratulatory even complacent, regarding themselves as resourceful enough to evade capture. The use of the subordinate clause as dominant ‘which’ gives weight and urgency to the narrative. This murder is not the killers’  first, yet Keever’s death also  feels different too: ‘They would use search planes…even drones..’ Keever has been killed out of expediency and represents a mistake” they” are trying to rectify in the middle of the night. Dark deeds under the cover of literal darkness.

 

Yet the killers’ control has been undermined and that ‘evening train’ brings nemesis to their town. Retribution in the form of an avenging angel carrying only a toothbrush for company. Reacher is a Knight; chivalrous, capable and protective of the ‘good’.

 Needless to say, we read on!