Killing Floor
- 520
- Pages
- about 10 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 0 weeks on the list
- Barry Award for Best First Novel
- Anthony Award for Best First Novel
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Our view
The first Jack Reacher novel sets the template: a lone outsider, a small Georgia town with something to hide, and prose cut to short, hard sentences. Readers who want pace and a tough hero in the hard-boiled tradition will enjoy themselves. Those looking for inner life find Reacher flat, and some find the style repetitive and, at 520 pages, a few chapters padded.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Killing Floor is the debut novel by Lee Child, first published in 1997 by Putnam. The book won the Anthony Award and Barry Award for best first novel. Set in 1997 in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia, it follows Jack Reacher in his first thriller book. It is written in the first person.
Reading order · Jack Reacher
Full order & progress →- Killing FloorThis book
7.67.6 / 10 - Die Trying
7.57.5 / 10 - Tripwire
7.57.5 / 10 - Running Blind
7.67.6 / 10 - Echo Burning
7.67.6 / 10 - Without Fail
7.77.7 / 10 - Persuader
7.77.7 / 10 - The Enemy
7.87.8 / 10 - One Shot
8.08.0 / 10 - The Hard Way
7.87.8 / 10 - Bad Luck and Trouble
7.97.9 / 10 - Nothing to Lose
7.57.5 / 10 - Gone Tomorrow
7.97.9 / 10 - 61 Hours
7.87.8 / 10 - Worth Dying For
7.97.9 / 10 - The Affair
7.97.9 / 10 - A Wanted Man
7.77.7 / 10 - Never Go Back
7.77.7 / 10 - Personal
7.77.7 / 10 - Make Me
7.77.7 / 10 - Night School
7.77.7 / 10 - The Midnight Line
7.77.7 / 10 - Past Tense
7.87.8 / 10 - Blue Moon
7.67.6 / 10 - The Sentinel
7.67.6 / 10 - Better off Dead
7.37.3 / 10 - No Plan B
7.67.6 / 10 - The Secret
7.67.6 / 10 - In Too Deep
7.57.5 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 859 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 85% of the weight and the score stays at 7.6 — the Thriller average of 7.6 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.6 | 40 | 5% |
| Google Books | 8.0 | 12 | 1% |
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 807 | 94% |
Frequently asked
How long is Killing Floor?
It has 520 pages — longer than 80% of the ranked books in Thriller.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Thriller — and a score of 7.6, the closest to this book.
