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.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This study guide contains depictions of violence, references to racist attitudes and language, and describes threats of sexual violence.
Jack Reacher arrives in Margrave, Georgia by bus and walks the rest of the way into town. He stops at a diner called Eno’s for a late breakfast, and within a half hour the parking lot swarms with police. Reacher observes the other customers and diner staff and decides the heavily-armed police officers are here for him. Reacher is arrested for murder. He rides in a squad car with Baker and Stevenson, two of the arresting officers, and as they approach central Margrave, Reacher observes the town’s well-funded appearance. He also wonders what his arrest is really about, since he “hadn’t killed anybody. Not for a long time, and not in [this] town” (6).
Chapter 2 Summary
At the police headquarters, the sole female officer takes Reacher’s mugshot photo and completes his fingerprint record. Baker and Stevenson put Reacher in a room by himself. Reacher expects they will isolate him, but Baker soon returns. Reacher tests Baker’s “respectful” approach by silently requesting his handcuffs be removed. Baker unlocks the handcuffs and says he is taking Reacher to see the chief of police. Reacher, speaking aloud for the first time, agrees to go with Baker. The chief, Morrison, is convinced he has seen Reacher somewhere before. Later, Reacher is interrogated by Captain Finlay. Reacher says he is a former military policeman, and he came to Margrave because he likes blues music. His brother told him about a blues musician named Blind Blake who supposedly died in Margrave. Until the officers can check Reacher’s alibi for the murder of an unidentified man at a warehouse near the highway, Reacher will be placed in a holding cell and eventually transferred to a nearby state facility. Reacher falls asleep reading a newspaper article about a recent Coast Guard blockade. Finlay and Baker wake him up with news that they found a witness who saw Reacher “hanging around” the murder scene: Morrison.
Chapter 3 Summary
Finlay and Baker continue interrogating Reacher. The victim was a large man who carried no I.D. but had a phone number and the word “Pluribus” written on a piece of paper hidden in his shoe. The murderer shot the victim twice, which killed him, and then the body was severely beaten and covered with flattened cardboard. The coroner places time of death at around midnight, and Reacher is confident his alibi will clear him: he was boarding the Greyhound in Tampa, Florida at that time. Reacher tells Finlay that their one murder suspect is actually a team of three people, because each part of the murder indicates different personalities: one person executed the victim by gunshot and collected the bullet casings; the second person committed the frenzied postmortem beating; the third person covered the body in a hurry. Reacher suggests Finlay call the phone number found in the victim’s shoe. A local man named Paul Hubble answers; Finlay pretends to be someone from the phone company in order to get Hubble’s address. Baker leads Reacher back to the holding cell.
Chapter 4 Summary
While Reacher waits in the cell, he listens to blues music in his head, changing the key signature of one song so it becomes vicious instead of cheerful. Reacher knows Morrison is lying about seeing him at the murder scene, but he does not know why the chief would lie. Reacher falls asleep and wakes up to see the woman who fingerprinted him standing outside the cell. She offers to bring him coffee, and Reacher decides he likes her because it is probably “against the fat chief’s rules to bring coffee to the condemned man” (46). Reacher sees the woman’s nametag has her last name on it: Roscoe. Roscoe explains since Reacher’s prints have not flagged any records in the three hours since she submitted them to the database, she thinks he is innocent.
Baker returns from picking up Paul Hubble, and Reacher deduces that since the trip only took Baker around 20 minutes, Hubble must live somewhere close to the police headquarters in the center of town. Reacher evaluates Hubble’s “preppie” appearance: “This was a man who wallowed in the yuppie dream like a pig in shit” (50). More importantly, Hubble’s body language is nervous. Hubble and Finlay talk privately in a separate room. Reacher asks Baker to escort him to the bathroom, and as they walk Reacher realizes that Baker knows he is innocent because Baker is not cautious around him. Reacher returns to the cell and waits.
Soon, there is a commotion in the interrogation room. Finlay leads Hubble out into the main lobby, and Baker takes Hubble to the holding cell. Reacher sees how badly Hubble has fallen apart. Sometime later, Baker brings Reacher to an office to meet with Finlay again. Finlay says Hubble confessed to the murder, but he does not believe him. Finlay believes Reacher’s theory of a three-man killing team, and Hubble’s confession only had a couple of “plausible” details. Furthermore, Hubble was at a family party the night of the murder and was driven home by his sister-in-law’s other brother-in-law: Officer Stevenson.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
From the opening pages of the novel, Reacher’s analytical capabilities are on prominent display. He calmly assesses the other patrons in the diner and even anticipates how the arresting officers will behave. His decision to remain silent demonstrates that he likely learned the hard way that misunderstandings can happen during a tense arrest. Reacher’s silence flusters Baker and Stevenson, the two lead arresting officers, and Reacher takes this as a sign that he still has some control in the situation.
Reacher’s assessment of the town of Margrave itself is also noteworthy, as he quickly notes how perfect the town looks; the roads are free of potholes, all the buildings are newly-refurbished, and the landscaping is precisely maintained.
Despite all the indications of an idyllic Southern town, perfect in every way, Reacher finds the perfection strange, as if it is too good to be true. The novel’s opening chapters lean heavily into the theme of coincidence: Reacher came to Margrave to learn about a blues musician his brother told him about, and he arrives the morning after a mysterious murder he is arrested for, even though he was not even there when it happened. Furthermore, some of the things Morrison and the other officers say seem offhanded or coincidental but are later revealed to be significant revelations of the officers’ own involvement in the murder.
These chapters function as a means of introducing most of the novel’s significant characters. Roscoe, the only female officer, and Finlay, the only officer of color, become Reacher’s two closest companions while he investigates Margrave. In the tradition of detective genre fiction, the hero has a close friend who helps with the case, as well as a romantic interest who is a noble heroine in her own right, rather than a stereotypical damsel in distress. Morrison and Baker are initially presented as belonging to the “good guys,” but their behavior leaves much room for doubt. Morrison is too eager to put Reacher behind bars, and Baker is too careless with security while Reacher is in custody. Paul Hubble, the “yuppie” banker, confesses to the murder even though Officer Stevenson, a relative, is Hubble’s alibi. The police department’s investigation is convoluted from the start, and Morrison’s eagerness to pin the murder on Reacher because he is an outsider stands as a significant red flag.
Reacher’s interpretation of the details at the murder scene further establish his expertise. While the Margrave officers see one body and assume one killer, Reacher examines each stage of the killing individually, and then pieces them together to reconstruct the full scene. Reacher coolly analyzes the three phases of the murder: the professional shooter is not going to suddenly snap and pulverize the body, and the postmortem kicker is not likely to have enough clarity to realize the body ought to be concealed. Similarly, the emotionally-distant shooter picked up the bullet casings, and so is unlikely to do the sloppy cover-up. The shooter is someone more disciplined and cautious than that behavior indicates. Reacher’s assessment of the killing shows his skills as an investigator, while also demonstrating his understanding of human psychology. As a military policeman, he had to think how his criminals thought—and his criminals were also military, highly-trained and intelligent, so he always had to be better. All of this immediately sets him apart from the ordinary citizen and establishes his professional background as well as the imperturbable, gritty, superhuman mettle that Child sought to cultivate in his hero.
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