Diferent strokes and all that - but imo the visitor doesnt work because reachers relatioship with jodie garber is unrealistic and shallow, plus the plot is unbelievable (why would the FBI take on a RIF'd ex military cop to investigate some military homicides - surely current military cops would be doing that, plus FBI have their own resources, plus reacher would already have an FBI file from the events in die trying )
In my estimation it went Killing floor= good (although we've seen the bleached money plot before - for a start its in Robert Crais's Indigo Slam ), die trying =excellent, tripwire= okay, the visitor= terrible, echo burning= return to form nearly as good as die trying, persuader = good action but terrible plot, without fail = good, one shot = again good action but very weak plotting, the hard way = good ideas but not put together very well (its not credible for example that reacher could break the arms of three mercenrys while armed only with a poker - it smacks of needing to reduce the numbers for the final confrrontation but not knowing how), bad luck and trouble = equally poor execution of what could have been a good book, The Enemy = return to form as a prequel, Nothing to lose= very very weak plotting , the idea seems to be getting tired. After that I lost interest and didnt read the next three , although i recently picked up 'the affair' in tescos and that was okay if maybe a little contrived.
The new one "a wanted man" looksd totally contrived and false and i won't be bothering -it strikes me Lee child is running out of ways to get reacher into trouble and thus begining to get more and more artificial - which is why the only ones to work recently have been prequels where he's back to being a millitary cop
The same can be said of the mcnab nick stone thrillers - remote control was good , but then he lost the plot a bit with crisis four and started putting stone in totally unbelievable situations (for example without spoiling the plot he's sent to the US to kill someone but not provided with a firearm, so he tries to use a hunting bow like one would a handgun - totally unbelievable, for one thing i'm sure an Ex SAS deniable operator would be able to get his hands on a firearm (for example reacher mugs a drug dealer for one in the enemy), and for another if you did had to use a bow you wouldnt enter a close combat situation - you'd stay back and use it like you would a sniper rifle).
Child carries unbelievability off better than McNab as hes a better writer so even his poorer books are readable but some are distinctly better than others