Not your father's James Bond

It's very bad of me, I know, but I am bingeing on Lee Child's Jack Reacher books. They are the guy version of chick lit, perfect reading for August. Quite apart from the mayhem that Mr Reacher (or Major Reacher, as he sometimes is) inflicts on the bad guys, the writing is wonderfully sly. A British Special Ops agent tells Reacher that it just won't do for the heads of the G-8 to be assassinated in London: "An attack of this nature on British soil would be worse than catastrophic. It would be embarrassing." Ian Fleming would never have come up with that line.