Killing Floor cover
Thriller · Crime

Killing Floor

Mood
Tense, Dark
Protagonist
Male, first-person
Parental Rating
R
Pace
Brisk

Themes & atmosphere

The reading map

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Common questions

What you might want to know about Killing Floor

The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.

Jack Reacher gets off a Greyhound in a small Georgia town and is arrested for a murder committed an hour earlier. The dead man turns out to be his brother. Reacher decides to stay until he understands why. First in the series.

Yes. Killing Floor (1997) is the first novel in Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. The series has more than 25 main books, plus several novellas and short stories. Andrew Child has continued the series since 2020.

Each Jack Reacher novel is largely standalone, with character continuity but rarely plot continuity. New readers can start with Killing Floor for chronological order or with later books. Lee Child has said many fans start with The Killing Floor or One Shot.

Killing Floor was written by Lee Child, published in 2002 by Jove.

Killing Floor is 576 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.

At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Killing Floor takes most readers 9 to 12 hours to finish.

Killing Floor is a standalone novel by Lee Child, not part of a series.

Killing Floor is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.

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