62 pages • 2 hours read
Lee ChildKilling Floor
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Jack Reacher
Jack Reacher is a former military policeman who now travels the country on his own terms. His determination to stay anonymous and off-the-grid is in direct contrast to a modern world that increasingly tracks one’s every move. Like the knights-errant in medieval literature, Reacher wanders from one city to the next, solving their problems with brutally efficient vigilante justice and leaving before the authorities catch on. Because Reacher exists outside traditional structures of law and order, and his moral compass is rather flexible, he is able to deliver the punishments that the police or the FBI cannot. Lee Child designed Reacher to be an “overdog” rather than an underdog, someone who has no flaws or emotional hang-ups and always wins every fight. Despite his highly specialized skill set and deadly use of physical force, Child notes that Reacher is “awkward in civilian society. He gets around his difficulties by assembling a series of eccentricities that border on the weird. […] He has enough problems to make him interesting, but crucially, he himself doesn’t know he has these problems. He thinks he’s fine. He thinks he’s normal” (xxi, emphasis original). Reacher chooses not to participate in things he does not understand, such as doing his own laundry, having a credit card, or owning a house.
Jeroen Vermeulen identifies Reacher as belonging to “the age-old archetype of the stranger who restores order in an unsettled community” (113). Unlike traditional knights-errant, who answer to a church, a royal, or a noble, Reacher’s willingness to help the community “does not hinge on the community’s need but rather on the level of his wrath or curiosity” (115). Child also remarks that Reacher “needs to sense a sneering, arrogant, manipulative opponent in the shadows” (xxvii). He likes the challenge and the mystery, but he does not do it for the thrill. Reacher only gets involved when absolutely necessary, when he or a loved one is subject to unnecessary harm. He evaluates a problem’s worthiness by how much undue harm it causes, and how directly that harm insults him. In this sense, Reacher is a modern-day paladin, a warrior renowned for his heroism—but only on his own terms.
Officer Roscoe
Roscoe is a police officer in Margrave, Georgia. She is the only female officer on the force and appears to also be the youngest in the department. Her family goes back generations in Margrave, and she takes great pride in her community and her role within it. She is Reacher’s romantic interest in the novel and also uses police resources to help him solve his brother’s murder. Roscoe’s main conflict in the novel is internal, as she wrestles with the reality of Margrave’s corruption and reevaluates her place in the community. Vermeulen notes that women in the Reacher series seem like flat characters, “chiefly function[ing] as a distraction or sounding board for Reacher’s theories,” and often share Reacher’s “(para)military background, his solitary lifestyle, his innate sense of justice” (119). In Vermeulen’s analysis, a heroine like Roscoe lacks Reacher’s “crazed” determination and physical prowess, rendering her unable to solve the community’s problems without Reacher’s assistance. Roscoe often defies this interpretation, demonstrating a readiness to follow Reacher outside the bounds of the law she is sworn to uphold, which moves her character beyond the stereotypical damsel in distress. Roscoe may not be as physically imposing, but she balances Reacher with her emotional sensitivity and similarly flexible moral compass. She is the first one to suggest Reacher involve himself in Joe’s murder investigation, and she supports his ruthless elimination of Kliner’s men—to a point. She belongs to a branch of the uniformed officialdom that Reacher has long since abandoned, but her knowledge of Margrave’s history and citizenry prove integral in Reacher’s own investigation. Roscoe’s approval of Reacher gives him access to the town he would not have otherwise; people respect Roscoe, and they generally align themselves with those she respects.
Captain Finlay
Finlay is the captain of the detective bureau in the Margrave Police Department. He previously worked 20 years on the police force in Boston, Massachusetts, and his wife divorced him when he retired. Finlay took the Margrave job despite his FBI friend, Picard, urging him not to. Finlay is one of the few non-white characters in the novel; as the only Black man on the police force, he is subject to regular microaggressions and suspicion from his white coworkers. The racist environment does not deter him from continuously striving to do his job well and honor the law. At the novel’s beginning, Finlay is uptight and stressed. He wears heavy tweed suits in the Georgian summer, and Reacher suspects he does so as a form of self-punishment. Throughout the novel, Finlay questions Reacher’s use of deadly force on Kliner’s men. By the end, however, he eagerly burns down Kliner’s warehouse and even helps Reacher kill the last few villains. Finlay believes Morrison and Teale hired him because they thought he was an idiot, but he is actually highly perceptive and intelligent, keeping in mental step with Reacher as they theorize. Reacher’s influence loosens him up, and Finlay embraces (brief) vigilantism in a way that amuses Reacher. In a traditional detective novel, Finlay would be the close friend who dies helping the detective solve the mystery—thankfully, Child spared him this fate.
Kliner
Killing Floor’s central villain does not appear on the page until a third of the way through the novel. Kliner is an older man with mean eyes and yellow teeth. He enjoys the ruthless cruelty of his killings, as does his psychopathic son. Before the novel begins, Kliner’s chemical plant polluted a New Orleans river and killed at least eight people to cover up the EPA investigation. He moved the plant to Venezuela and relocated his stateside industrial warehouse to just outside Margrave. Kliner Industries is a cover for a mass-counterfeiting operation, which he will kill to protect. That said, Kliner’s “panic” murders are meticulous, even gruesome, and he clearly delights at the thought of even slightly hurting another person. Kliner targeted Margrave because the country left it behind, making it easy prey for his operation. He funnels counterfeit money into the town through his Foundation as a means of buying everyone’s silence. At the novel’s conclusion, Kliner reveals he shot and killed Reacher’s brother Joe and laughed while his son brutally kicked the corpse. Kliner is, in many respects, a stereotypical villain. He is ugly, greedy, and enjoys killing for the sake of destruction. What sets him apart from the genre’s conventions is his intellect and his ability to manipulate vulnerable people and situations to his benefit.
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