Killing Floor
by Lee Child
★ Top 25 book of 1997 · #11 on Best Books of 1997
Drifter and former military policeman Jack Reacher stops briefly in Margrave, Georgia, and is arrested for murder within the hour. He knows he is innocent, but nobody in town is willing to listen.
Best for: Thriller fans who like a tough, lone drifter fighting a hostile town
Killing Floor is #11 on BookWard's Best Books of 1997, out of 27 1997 books that cleared our data bar.
What Killing Floor is about
Jack Reacher is a former army military police major who drifts from place to place with no fixed plans. When he steps off a Greyhound bus in the small Georgia town of Margrave, he is picked up at a diner and arrested for murder on the sheriff's orders. In a cell he meets Finlay, the chief of detectives, and Roscoe, an officer who is quietly sure he did not do it.
Told in Reacher's own voice, the story is set in 1997 and wastes little time. The dead man turns out to be Reacher's brother, and the trail leads toward a counterfeiting operation and a town that seems to protect its own. It is a tense, hard-edged look at corruption, loyalty and revenge, and the first of the Reacher novels. It suits readers who like a lone outsider taking on a whole community.
Killing Floor on the Best Books of 1997
Killing Floor came out in 1997. Of the 27 books first published in 1997 that met BookWard's data bar, it ranks #11 on our Best Books of 1997 list.
Why it made the list: 726 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 3.8 out of 5 (40 ratings); 28 are reading it right now. The list ranks each year’s books on how many readers have picked them up, how highly readers rate them, and how many are reading them right now.
Nearby on the 1997 list
- The Subtle Knife Philip Pullman, #9
- Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden, #10
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Anne Fadiman, #12
- A Walk in the Woods Bill Bryson, #13
See all Best Books of 1997 Best books by year
More years: Best Books of 1996 Best Books of 1998.
The numbers behind it
- Readers: 613 want to read it, 28 are reading it now and 85 have read it, according to Open Library.
- Ratings: 3.8 out of 5 from 40 Open Library ratings.
| Signal | This book (0 to 100) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | 78 | 55% |
| Reader love | 19 | 25% |
| Being read right now | 78 | 20% |
Questions about Killing Floor
When was Killing Floor published?
Killing Floor by Lee Child was first published in 1997.
Was Killing Floor one of the best books of 1997?
Killing Floor is #11 on BookWard's Best Books of 1997, out of 27 1997 books that cleared our data bar. 726 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 3.8 out of 5 (40 ratings); 28 are reading it right now.
Why is Killing Floor on the Best Books of 1997 list?
726 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 3.8 out of 5 (40 ratings); 28 are reading it right now.
More of the best books of 1997
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling, #1
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad Robert T. Kiyosaki, #2
- Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond, #3
- The Adventures of Captain Underpants Dav Pilkey, #4
- The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle, #5
- Into Thin Air Jon Krakauer, #6
See the full Best Books of 1997, the Top 100, or new books on Rising.
How we know
This page uses public data: Open Library reader counts and ratings, and Wikipedia page views for recent years. The description is paraphrased from real source text. Rankings reflect reading interest, not quality or sales, and can be affected by data gaps. Lists update monthly.
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