Slicer used to love the Death Wish films. Seeing the (very) bad guys get their rough comeuppance at the hands of Charles Bronson always seemed to be justice done which wouldn’t otherwise have been - in this world anyway. Dirty Harry appealed for similar reasons. Lee Child’s series of thriller novels with Jack Reacher evoke the same sorts of feelings. Jack’s always there on hand to sort out the baddies when local law enforcement is struggling to do it. Whilst Jack can get a bit violent, it seems kinda necessary and never gratuitous. The novels are also real page-turners.
Occasionally when reading a novel, certain aspects of the writer’s craft strike you. So it was recently, when Slicer read “Gone Tomorrow” by Lee Child. Child’s books always seem well researched, whether it’s the detail of the locations and routes, the specifications and characteristics of the various guns which Jack encounters/uses, or his accounts of life in the military and his descriptions of investigative/forensic principles. (The Jack Reacher character is an ex-military policeman). Gone Tomorrow is no different in this respect. Child (real name Jim Grant) has written more gripping plots, e.g. The Visitor, or Bad Luck and Trouble, or The Persuader, but this 2009 novel is a great one and shares the same traits of detail. Slicer has no idea whether some of the detail is accurate, or whether it’s all fictional. For example, the List of Bullet Points for spotting a suicide bomber, allegedly drawn up by Israeli counter-intelligence, sounds entirely believable. However, Lee Child’s writing is not all male machismo – he has a sense of humour:
“Suicide bombers are... nervous – by definition they’re all first timers”
He’s not exactly flattering about the intelligence of American Delta Force special ops soldiers either:
“Delta is full of guys who can stay awake for a week and walk a hundred miles and shoot the balls off a tsetse fly, but it’s relatively empty of guys who can do all that and then tell you the difference between a Shiite and a trip to the latrine.”
Slicer has a friend who is capable of telling dramatic stories of events which (he claims) happened to him. Slicer enjoys the accounts but never knows which elements to believe. To add to the credibility of the stories, his friend typically makes use of seeming detailed knowledge on some subject which, at that moment, Slicer is not in a position to question but which may prove later to be less than true. Still, it makes for great entertainment.
Slicer wishes he had learnt earlier in life that many of those who claim knowledge and superior insight are, in fact, bluffers who pepper their voiced opinions with snippets of detail, which may not add up to the truth of the matter. As Mark Twain (real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens) said:
“To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.”
However, he was borrowing a little from the author of a different kind of book, Charles Darwin, who wrote in the previous century:
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”
Slicer borrowed from both of the above to create his own maxim:
“Real knowledge defines its own limits of confidence.”
In addition to Lee Child/Jack Reacher, Slicer has considerable admiration for Alicia Keys (real name Alicia Cook). You may wonder what the connection is between Jack Reacher, Alicia Keys and the possession of confidence. Jack doesn't play the piano (and neither do some of the baddies after he's finished with them). Alicia will explain the connection for you:
“I love kick boxing. It's a lot of fun. It gives you a lot of confidence when you can kick somebody in the head.”
Alicia Keys, Ebony Magazine, Jan 2004.
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