'BLUE MOON'......THE REACHER FROM THE BLAH LAGOON...

Blue Moon by Lee Child (2019)   When it comes to reading a beloved book series, nothing disappoints more than when the author goes on auto-pilot.........simply spits out a far-fetched, connect-the-dots cash grab that smells like he's not even writing it with his eyes open........

             So it's strange and painful to read the latest adventure of Lee Child's Jack Reacher, the retired Army officer who wanders about the country, stumbling into nests of villainy and forced to right wrongs with a vengeance.......

              Most of this book's a ludicrous rehash of the "Fistful Of Dollars" plot - pitting two groups of scumbags against each other (or for you true cinema purists, "Yojimbo"....or for that matter, Dashiell Hammet's novel "Red Harvest")

              Reacher comes to the rescue of an elderly couple deeply in debt to the loan sharks of a nasty Ukrainian gang........the Ukrainians, even before Reacher enters the scene, are already engaged in a tit-for-tat corpse count with a rival gang of Albanians.

               Once Reacher starts adding his own entries to this ever growing body pile, the two gangs mistakenly believe they're being attacked by the Russians.

              And then we're off to the races, with Reacher perforating and clobbering enough goons to equal 20 spaghetti westerns.......all these faceless, nameless hoods go down like bowling pins......and even bowling pins have more characterization than what Lee Child provides here.

              Along the way, Reacher recruits his own oddball Scooby-Doo gang.......including a cute Pixie Dreamgirl who, halfway through the book, turns into a fearless, kick-ass warrior-babe.....but there's so much other idiotic stuff going here, you'll barely notice the difference.

               In one of the book's stupidest sequences, a whole army of gangsters make it easier on Reacher and company by conveniently wiping each other out........how accommodating of them......

               Even worse, Reacher's ultimate takedowns of the major villains are done abruptly and offhand.......by the time the story arrives at the gang's ripped-from-the-headlines  real criminal plot, it's debatable whether you'll care......

               We've enjoyed our share of Reacher books, especially the ones where our hero hitchhikes his way into some horrific evil in the Heartland........but this one reads like Child programmed his laptop to write a Reacher book without him.......

                Here's hoping the real Reacher we all know and love returns for the next book.....1 star (*).