Like you, I read about a half dozen or so of his earlier books but got kind of bored with them after a while. Haven't read one in years now. Kind of the same with Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt series. Read them all but got bored with them after so many.
I have read some of the early "Jack Reacher" books. Has any body read any recent of these books & are they any good?
They're not bad. Very violent, lots of similarities from one story to the next.
Somebody contacted Jennifer Byrne at the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club and requested a review of a Reacher story. Her comment, with laughter, was, "My! What a lot of testosterone."
You may be interested to know that Diane Capri has (with Lee Childs's blessing) written a series called "The Hunt for Jack Reacher". I stumbled onto the first one "Don't Know Jack" at the library and it revisited the locality and the characters of the first Reacher novel. It was OK.
But the one thing I don't understand is how those chose a midget like Tom Cruise to play the part of 6' 4" Jack Reacher in the movie. A masterpiece of miscasting. I don't think I'll be going to see it any time soon.