Worth Dying For by Lee Child

 (Jack Reacher #15)

400 pages / 13 hrs, 45 mins

"There’s deadly trouble in the corn county of Nebraska . . . and Jack Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved, decades-old case of a missing child that Reacher can’t let go.
 
"The Duncans want Reacher gone—and it’s not just past secrets they’re trying to hide. For as dangerous as the Duncans are, they’re just the bottom of a criminal food chain stretching halfway around the world. For Reacher, it would have made much more sense to put some distance between himself and the hard-core trouble that’s bearing down on him. For Reacher, that was also impossible."  --from the publisher

This installment seemed bloodier than is typical of the series. I was disappointed in the story (or lack thereof) and characters. Reacher's cause was "worth dying for," but I'm not sure this story is worth reading. I give it two out of five stars.

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

 (Jack Reacher #13)

441 pages / 14 hrs, 47 mins

"New York City. Two in the morning. A subway car heading uptown. Jack Reacher, plus five other passengers. Four are okay. The fifth isn't.

"In the next few tense seconds Reacher will make a choice and trigger an electrifying chain of events in this gritty, gripping masterwork of suspense by #1 New York Times best seller Lee Child.

"Susan Mark was the fifth passenger. She had a lonely heart, an estranged son, and a big secret. Reacher, working with a woman cop and a host of shadowy feds, wants to know just how big a hole Susan Mark was in, how many lives had already been twisted before hers, and what danger is looming around him now.

"Because a race has begun through the streets of Manhattan in a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. Susan Mark's plain little life was critical to dozens of others in Washington, California, Afghanistan...from a former Delta Force operator now running for the U.S. Senate, to a beautiful young woman with a fantastic story to tell and to a host of others who have just one thing in common: They're all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or maybe just enough to get him killed."  --from the publisher

This one was just okay for me. A lot of the writing seemed unnecessary to the plot, and I can always do without the torture scenes--even when they aren't too graphic. I give it three out of five stars.

Nothing to Lose by Lee Child

 (Jack Reacher #12)

407 pages / 13 hrs, 55 mins

"It wasn’t the welcome Reacher expected. He was just passing through, minding his own business. But within minutes of his arrival a deputy is in the hospital and Reacher is back in Hope, setting up a base of operations against Despair, where a huge, seething walled-off industrial site does something nobody is supposed to see . . . where a small plane takes off every night and returns seven hours later . . . where a garrison of well-trained and well-armed military cops—the kind of soldiers Reacher once commanded—waits and watches . . . where above all two young men have disappeared and two frightened young women wait and hope for their return.

"Joining forces with a beautiful cop who runs Hope with a cool hand, Reacher goes up against Despair—against the deputies who try to break him and the rich man who tries to scare him—and starts to crack open the secrets, starts to expose the terrifying connection to a distant war that’s killing Americans by the thousand.

"Now, between a town and the man who owns it, between Reacher and his conscience, something has to give. And Reacher never gives an inch."  --from the publisher

A good story, but too preachy for me. I give it three out of five stars.

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child
(Jack Reacher #11)
378 pages / 13 hrs, 17 mins

"From a helicopter high above the California desert, a man is sent free-falling into the night...and Jack Reacher is plunged into the heart of a conspiracy that is killing old friends.

"Reacher has no phone, no address, no ties. But a woman from his former military unit has found him using a signal only the eight members of their elite team would know. Then she tells him about the brutal death of one of their own. Soon they learn of the sudden disappearance of two other comrades. But Reacher won't give up--because in a world of bad luck and trouble, when someone targets Jack Reacher and his team, they'd better be ready for what comes right back at them." --from the publisher

Another solid installment in the series with a unique setting for the big showdown. I give it four out of five stars.

One Shot by Lee Child

One Shot by Lee Child
(Jack Reacher #9)

"Six shots. Five dead. One heartland city thrown into a state of terror. But within hours the cops have it solved: a slam-dunk case. Except for one thing. The accused man says: You got the wrong guy. Then he says: Get Reacher for me. And sure enough, from the world he lives in—no phone, no address, no commitments–ex–military investigator Jack Reacher is coming. In Lee Child’s astonishing new thriller, Reacher’s arrival will change everything—about a case that isn’t what it seems, about lives tangled in baffling ways, about a killer who missed one shot–and by doing so give Jack Reacher one shot at the truth.…" --from the publisher

I liked this installment in the Reacher series best so far. Great puzzler. Four out of five stars for me.

Blue Moon by Lee Child

Blue Moon: A jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child --- 356 pages

Book #24 in the best-selling series by Lee Child may be Child's best yet.

“This is a random universe,” Reacher says. “Once in a blue moon things turn out just right.”

Reacher is on a yet another Greyhound bus, minding his own business, with no particular place in mind, and all the time in the world to get there. Then he steps off the bus to help a fellow passenger --- an old man, a victim just waiting to happen. And once again, Reacher has found a mission. 

An elderly couple have gotten in over their heads with a loan shark, and now they owe more money than they can possibly pay to the gangsters who control the loan sharking. Reacher decides to intervene. Reacher's brand of intervention ignites a chain reaction that blows up the shaky truce between the rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs that each control half the city.

Reacher teams up with a waitress and some local musicians trying to make a living in the middle of this war zone, and sets out to take down both sets of mobsters and punish the greedy. It’s a long shot. The odds are against him. But Reacher believes in justice . . . the kind of justice that comes along once in a blue moon.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Journal of Books.

Click HERE to read the review from the Real Book Spy.com.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the *review from Publishers Weekly.

Past Tense by Lee Child

Past Tense: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child --- 382 pages

Jack Reacher drifts into a small, unremarkable  New Hampshire town called Laconia and --- inevitably --- walks straight into trouble in this 23rd entry in the best selling series.  This time though there is a personal connection: Laconia was where Reacher’s father, Stan, grew up, until he enlisted in the Marines and never looked back.  Reacher knows almost nothing about his father's past or his family, so this is a chance to see what he can find out, if for no other reason than he may never get another opportunity.

Coincidentally, not too far away, a young Canadian couple in a broken down car stumble on an isolated motel being refurbished by four friendly young men who offer to help them out. Too late the Canadians --- Patty Sundstrom and her boy friend Shorty Fleck --- discover Mark Reacher and his friends have big plans for them.

Patty and Shorty are not just stock victims for Reacher to save, however. They’re interesting characters in their own right, determined to save themselves. Their part of the story has an urgency that is missing from the more leisurely exposition of Reacher's search through old census records and property files to find his father's family home at an old, abandoned tin mine operation called Ryantown. The suspense builds as the reader watches the the two plot lines converge. The climax is brief, brutal and intensely satisfying to that atavistic sense of justice that lives in the hindbrain.

At the end of the story Reacher finally finds the answers he was looking for, when a Laconia detective puts him in touch with an old man who was a cousin of his father. Someone who can tell him what his father was like as a boy, and why he left Laconia behind.

"He was a nice person, back when that meant something. But you better not mess with his sense of right and wrong. Underneath he was a bomb waiting to go off. . . He had a rule. If you did a bad thing, he would make sure you only did it once. Whatever it took. He was a good fighter, and he was brave as a lunatic."

The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Click HERE for the * review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE for the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE for a review from the UK Independent.

Click HERE for a review from the New York Journal of Books.

Click HERE to view a Youtube trailer for Past Tense.

Persuader by Lee Child

Persuader by Lee Child
(Jack Reacher #7)
6 hours (no idea how many pages!)

I did it again...got an abridged version by mistake.  Still, it was a good Reacher story.

"...some unfinished business has now found Reacher. And Reacher is a man who hates unfinished business.

"Ten years ago, a key investigation went sour and someone got away with murder. Now a chance encounter brings it all back. Now Reacher sees his one last shot..."     --from the publisher

Killing Floor by Lee Child

Killing Floor by Lee Child
(Jack Reacher #1)
576 pages / 15 hrs, 18 mins

"Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher finds himself in Margrave, Georgia, where he is almost immediately arrested for murder; after being released, he joins with a straight-arrow detective and a beautiful lady cop to unearth a conspiracy that stretches through the small town and beyond."  --from the publisher

I'm reading these out of order, so this isn't my first time to read a book in the series.  It was a good mystery, but some of the descriptions were pretty gruesome.

Without Fail by Lee Child

Without Fail by Lee Child
(Jack Reacher #6)
374 pages / 13 hrs, 55 mins

"Skilled, cautious, and anonymous, Jack Reacher is perfect for the job: to assassinate the vice president of the United States. Theoretically, of course. A female Secret Service agent wants Reacher to find the holes in her system, and fast--because a covert group already has the vice president in their sights. They've planned well. There's just one thing they didn't plan on: Reacher."  --from the publisher

I really enjoyed this one. The action takes place in several locations and the adversary's motives are impossible to discern. Reacher's friend Neagley is smart with expertise that matches his own.

The Midnight Line by Lee Child

The Midnight Line: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child --- 368 pages

The Midnight Line is the 22nd Jack Reacher thriller from Lee Child, and it may well be the best one he's written to date.  As one reviewer says, this is the one that breaks your heart, as Reacher confronts the true cost of war intersecting with the opioid epidemic.

The new story begins where Make Me (2015) left off. Reacher and Michelle Chang spend three days together in Milwaukee.  On the fourth morning, when he returns to the room with coffee, she's gone. Just a note left on the pillow. And he understands why.

So he gets on a bus and heads west. At a rest stop in a small sad town in Minnesota, Reacher takes a stroll to stretch his legs, He passes a pawn shop and in the window he sees a West Point class ring from 2005. It's tiny; a woman cadet's class ring. Why would she give it up? Reacher's a West Point graduate himself. He knows how hard she worked to earn the right to wear that ring. It's not something you'd let go of easily.

Reacher decides to trace the ring back to its owner. Not just to return the ring, but to make sure she's all right. If she's okay, he'll just walk away.

But the trail he finds leads, step by step, into a web of lies, and violence, and desperation. Eventually it leads Reacher to the desolate wilds of Wyoming and a ghost of a town called Mule Crossing. Where he crosses paths with a retired FBI agent turned private investigator from Chicago. Who knows all about this woman and what might have gone wrong. Reacher has his own kind of honor.  If she's OK, he'll walk away. If she's not - he'll stop at nothing to set things right.

Reacher's on a quest for justice. Don't get in his way.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Times. 

Click HERE to read the review from the Washington Post.

No Middle Name by Lee Child

No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories by Lee Child --- 418 pages

This book includes all eleven previously published Jack Reacher short stories plus a bonus: the lead story in the book, "Too Much Time," comprises the first three chapters of Child's 22nd Reacher novel, The Midnight Line, due to be published next November.

Through these stories we get to see Reacher grow, from boy to man. In the story "Second Son," Reacher's father Stan, a Marine captain, wonders what his son will become,

"The kid was going to be huge. He was going to be an eighth of a ton of muscle. . .He had no trigger either. . .Reacher was permanently jammed wide open on full auto. . . The smart money brings a gun to a knife fight. Reacher brought a hydrogen bomb."

In "High Heat," 17 year-old Reacher, on his own in New York City, goes to the aid of a federal agent and helps get the evidence to arrest a mobster; has a memorable close encounter with a co-ed from Sarah Lawrence; and comes up with key evidence that will help identify the Son of Sam Killer --- all during the night of the famous 1977 blackout.

If it were anyone else by Jack Reacher, you'd be rolling your eyes by now, but Reacher is a well-established brand in macho fiction. Most of all he's just so much fun to read. No matter where he happens to be Reacher is a magnet for trouble. In the years since the series began he has grown older. Experience has left its marks on him, body and soul. But as a force of nature --- uncompromising, predatory, honest, principled  --- he remains simply irresistible. This is escapist fiction at its best.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Night School by Lee Child

Night School: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child --- 369 pages

Child's 21st Reacher novel takes us back in time to 1996. Major Jack Reacher, U.S. Army MP, is awarded his second Legion of Merit for the precision strike that took out two war criminals from the 1992-1995 Bosnian Genocide. Swift, summary justice, Reacher style, 

Meanwhile, recently reunited Germany is experiencing a resurgence of Fascism amid the first stirrings of Islamist extremism among its growing immigrant population. A double agent embedded in a terrorist cell sends a warning: an "American" is negotiating the sale of something to the leaders of a group that sounds like Al Qaeda hiding out in remote tribal country in Afghanistan. Whatever the American is selling, he wants one hundred million dollars for it and the mujahideen are willing to pay his price. 

Reacher is part of an elite team the National Security Council is hoping can identify the American and stop the sale, Hamburg is where the transfer will occur once the money has been deposited in the American's Swiss bank account. Unfortunately the local neo-Nazis are also keen to snatch the prize. And of course in 1996 secret agents still have to operate without benefit of the World Wide Web or cell phones, much less smart phones or CSI technology.

Night School is a little subdued at the start but the story grows on you as it unfolds. Child keeps his style lean and sharp, his hero bigger than life, 

Click HERE for a feature story on Lee Child from the New York Times.

Click HERE for a review from the London Evening Standard.

Click HERE for a review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE for a review from the Washington Post.

Make Me by Lee Child

Make Me: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child --- 402 pages

Jack Reacher is one of those guilty pleasures on my reading list.  Lee Child knows how to tell a fast-paced, hard-hitting and suspenseful story, and Jack Reacher is one of my favorite book characters.  In my mind's eye I picture him as a young Tom Selleck. Although Reacher is no longer young, and perhaps no longer invincible, he doesn't back off from trouble when it comes looking for him. As it always does.

In this, the twentieth book in the series, Reacher is taking a train to Chicago when he makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to stop off in a small rural Nebraska town (really not much more than a wide spot in the endless wheat fields where the railroad tracks cross an old two lane road. It's a place where the local farmers bring their grain to be shipped on to market. The sign says the place is called "Mother's Rest," and that piques Reacher's curiosity, so he gets off the train to find out how the town got that name.

But bucolic Mother's Rest is anything but restful for Reacher.  There's a woman anxiously waiting who briefly mistakes Reacher for someone else.  It turns out Michelle Chang is ex-FBI and currently a private investigator who was called in for back-up by a colleague named Keever.  But when Chang arrived in Mother's Rest, Keever was nowhere to be found and nobody in town will admit to having anything to do with him. Although his suitcase and clothes are still in his room at the local motel. It soon becomes clear that the locals don't like strangers who hang around town asking questions. But Reacher is not a man who takes no for an answer.

Click HERE to see the trailer for Make Me.

Click HERE to watch Lee Child and Stephen King talking about Jack Reacher.

Click HERE to read about Make Me on the DesPlaines IL Public Library Blog. CAUTION: SPOILER ALERT

Personal by Lee Child

Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel  by Lee Child --- 353 pages

A new Jack Reacher novel is always a welcome sight. Lee Child's thriller series is compulsively readable, with a laconic, lone wolf hero ready and able to fight dirty for a good cause.

In this book, the cause is "personal" because Reacher is on the trail of a killer he put away once and this time he intends to put him away once and for all. Reacher knows he's been set up to take a fall, and that makes it even more personal. There's also a girl: smart, strong, but still a little naive; she's along for the ride and Reacher is determined to show her what she needs to know to survive. Because in this world of intrigue, secrets and dirty deals, betrayal comes withe the territory, and you have to learn to trust your own instincts first.



Click HERE to read an NPR interview with Lee Child talking about his newest novel, Personal.

Click HERE to read the Washington Post review of Personal.

Click HERE to watch Lee Child answer fan questions about his Jack Reacher series.

Never Go Back by Lee Child

Never Go Back: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child --- 400 pages

A new Jack Reacher adventure is a guaranteed adrenaline high, and Never Go Back does not fail to deliver the patented Reacher goods.

After several books worth of adventure along the way, Reacher has finally made it back from South Dakota to Virginia and his long-anticipated rendezvous with Major Susan Turner, the intriguing voice on the phone who is the current commander of Reacher's old Army MP unit, the 110th. But when Reacher arrives, Major Turner is not there; she's locked up on a bogus charge of taking a bribe, which Reacher considers totally improbable. And the guy who's taken over the unit in her place raises every hackle Reacher owns. But there's worse to come, when Reacher himself is accused of a sixteen-year-old crime he didn't commit and then hit with a paternity suit involving a woman he doesn't remember and the teenage girl she claims is Reacher's daughter, allegedly living on the streets in Los Angeles. Then a couple of young toughs show up claiming Reacher is a disgrace to his old unit and threatening grievous bodily harm if he doesn't get out of town and never come back.

When threatened you have two choices: you can run or you can fight. And Reacher will ALWAYS choose to fight. Which is something his unknown antagonists should have found out before they made a very bad decision to target a man who never, ever backs down.

This is Child's eighteenth book about Jack Reacher. Will he continue to write more Reacher adventures? Child says as long as people keep on reading, he'll keep on writing. And when people stop reading, he'll stop writing and go live on the beach and never work again.

Check out this interview with author Lee Child.

A Wanted Man by Lee Child

A Wanted Man: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child --- 405 pages

The seventeenth and latest book in the popular series of suspense thrillers about former Army MP Major Jack Reacher, now his own very independent dispenser of justice.

Reacher's just trying to get from Nebraska to Virginia. There's a woman there he wants to meet. He's only talked to her on the phone a few times, but she intrigues him.

Standing on the eastbound lanes of an Interstate highway interchange in the middle of a cold winter night, with a badly broken nose from his last adventure, Reacher finally thumbs a ride with two guys and a woman headed to Chicago. But as they ride through the night, Reacher senses tension in the car. Little things --- offhand comments and actions --- that don't add up.

What Reacher doesn't know is that some ninety miles from where he was picked up, a man has been found stabbed to death, execution style, in an old pumping station. An eye witness happened to see three men go  into the station but only two come out. Within minutes the county sheriff is on the case. The pumping station provides access to a huge underground aquifer; in this age of terrorism, that's enough to trigger a call to the FBI.

Roadblocks go up on the highways. The APB says two men in a red car; then two men in any kind of car; then two men and a woman in any kind of car. But no one is looking for three men and a woman. Not yet.

All Reacher wanted was a ride to get him down the road towards Virginia. But instead he finds himself in the middle of a massive conspiracy, an undercover terrorism investigation gone bad, and now both the bad guys AND the good guys are gunning for Reacher.  It looks like the only way to extricate himself will require cleaning up the mess that others have made. Once again. So Reacher obliges.

Tripwire by Lee Child

Tripwire by Lee Child --- 343 pages

I've been going back to read the early Jack Reacher thrillers by Lee Child; this is the third book in the series, published in 1999, when Child was still filling in the details of the character he created.

Reacher's down in Key West when the novel begins, digging pools by day and working security in a strip club by night to make some money. When a private investigator from New York City shows up looking for him, he sees no reason why he should get involved. Until two thugs also come looking for him and have to be actively discouraged from sniffing around. And then the P.I. turns up very, very dead, and the killers have gone to some trouble to make sure the corpse can't be easily identified.

Suddenly Reacher sees definite reasons to get involved. He heads for New York. His only lead is the P.I.'s client, the person who wants to find Reacher. A Mrs. Jacob. That name means nothing to Reacher --- yet. But Mrs. Jacob turns out to be someone who means a whole lot to Reacher. And the people she's trying to help --- a bewildered, elderly couple looking for answers in the death of their only son, still MIA in Vietnam after thirty years --- prod his conscience.

One man, hiding behind a web of violence and deceit and greed, knows the truth about what happened thirty years ago in Vietnam. Cunning, vicious, and prepared to kill, he lays his trap and waits for Reacher to take the bait.