The New York Times Walks Into a Bar

With all due respect to best-selling novelist Lee Child, I am a bit disconcerted by the real estate his very readable short crime story headlined "Guy Walks Into a Bar..." occupied yesterday in the paper of record.

I'm all for publishing fiction, in particular the genre that Child has become famous for producing, but I'm a little dubious that the op-ed page of the Sunday New York Times is the appropriate venue for Child's story about mistaken identity in the early hours at a downtown bar. I wonder what the reasoning is to include creative writing in a newspaper that remains a pillar of print journalism.

The submission, starring Child's well-traveled ex-military cop character, Jack Reacher, is the first of a series of summer thrillers. Maybe the editorial editors are thinking there are too many opinions during the summer and they need something to bring weekend readers on Long Island to the page? Maybe they intended the story as an allegory about Hillary's post-campaign assessment of her boss?

Whatever the thinking of the august board, I can't help wondering if The New York Times Magazine wouldn't have been a better address for the fictional work. If there wasn't room in the shrinking magazine, then perhaps the Sunday Styles section? They could have cut Modern Love.