Mr. Child. Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

I have been a Reacher fan from the start, loved how the character was drawn, understood the dialogue, the plots, the scenes outlined, the logic, the lot in fact: but not any more.

I feel short changed. I reviewed Night School reluctantly, and had to ask if it was alternative reality Reacher. I didn't know the character.

Then I decided to track back and hoping for redemption, maybe it was just me and my after Christmas blues, decided to read, Make Me.

But it's shocking as well.

Even then I persisted and decided to buy Personal. When I looked at the reviews, the real ones, the lower starred ones. I decided to pass.

This is me talking to myself, and wondering do people who post glowing five star reviews know the other books, or the writer, or the character who once was Reacher?  I have an opinion that people do not read any more, at a pace to be able to concentrate and pay enough attention to detail to comprehend the story. Or do the skim a few lines at a time and skip ahead? ( Like checking a text to see if your own name is mentioned).

The Reacher I know is gone, his scars are gone, his maths ability and his ability to work out devastating plans and exact revenge is gone. Worse still the zest in the writing is missing, and trivial page filling gibberish is being used to pad the size of the book. The other books always had diversions that were interesting - like always being to tell the time of the day, or night.

In this book he gets a few "belts in the Gob", hard slaps around the head,  and is concussed, it appears. Then shortly after the blows he "nuts" a guy in the head and face, so hard he knocks him over and begins to fall forward himself.

This is one of those things that I feel were thrown in, to try and build tension, but is forgotten about, in that although Reacher stumbles a bit, or falls, he is still deadly accurate with his pistol shots.

Listen Mr. Child - blows bad enough to give you a concussion and then bouncing your head almost immediately afterwards into another hard skull means you are a dead duck: finished, kaput, out for the long count, brown bread, being measure for a harp, dead to this world. But then again this is only my opinion.

I gave this book my best try, Even read from about Chapter 49 to the end again. But no use, I'm out of the club, I can't go on. I will concentrate on writing my 20 Minute Reads for Kindle, at least if one of them is causing a reader pain, it will be over in a short time.

This book mentions hogs in a pen and how they are fed. In Ireland in the old days almost every family, out of economic necessity, kept pigs and fed them on a terrible concoction that we called "Slop" or "Pigs' Swill".

My view again: in this book I think Mr. Child is following a similar path, writing for some kind of necessity, it can't be money, but feeding his faithful readers with very inferior fare: maybe even pigs' food.