Killing Floor (Jack Reacher, Book 1)

G. K. Chesterton once said of Charles Dickens, “Dickens didn’t write what people wanted. Dickens wanted what people wanted.”

I shot them both in the back as they stood there. Two quick shots.

“The guy was my brother,” I said.

listened to the tiny voice inside my head saying: you’re supposed to do something about that.

But not just six years of thoughts—now I have to take the process back another thirty years or so, to the point when my reading habit first took hold.

As a result, I had come across some very obscure stuff, while being completely ignorant of many major figures.

That’s what a soft-nose bullet does. It goes in and flattens out as it does so. Becomes a blob of lead about the size of a quarter tumbling through whatever tissue it meets. Rips a great big exit hole for itself. And a nice slow soft-nose .22 makes sense with a silencer. No point using a silencer except with a subsonic muzzle velocity. Otherwise th

I had found that I liked some things, and disliked other things. I had always been drawn to outlaws. I liked cleverness and ingenuity. I liked the promise of intriguing revelations. I disliked a hero who was generally smart but did something stupid three-quarters of the way through the book, merely to set up the last part of the action.

The forehead is a perfect arch in all planes and very strong. The skull at the front is very thick. I have a ridge up there like concrete. The human head is very heavy. All kinds of neck muscles and back muscles balance it. It’s like getting hit in the face with a bowling ball. It’s always a surprise. People expect punching or kicking. A headbutt i