In his 24th adventure, nomadic vigilante Jack Reacher cuts a wide swath through an unnamed city's rival gangs in his quest to help an elderly couple under threat from loan sharks. The first half is genius; vintage Reacher, the physical embodiment of a spanner in the works, an agent of chaos for the Albanian and … Continue reading Review: Blue Moon by Lee Child

Past Tense is fuelled not by nerve-shredding tension or a confounding mystery, rather the tantalising inevitability of Jack Reacher's collision course with a group of kidnappers who've abducted a young couple for an abhorrent purpose. It sticks to the trusted formula, and boasts the unpretentious, staccato prose Reacher's legions of fans demand — and its insight … Continue reading Review: Past Tense by Lee Child

Lee Child course-corrected his Jack Reacher series back in 2003 with the publication of Persuader,  which saw a rawer, more violent Reacher (more reminiscent of the man we met in his debut, Killing Floor) face off against a dangerous figure from Reacher's past. Not that the series was flagging up until that point, but it … Continue reading Review: The Midnight Line by Lee Child

Night School takes Jack Reacher back to his army days — 1996 to be precise —and hurled into a covert investigation in Germany, alongside an FBI and CIA agent, with world-shattering consequences. The stakes have never been higher than those presented here; the twenty-first Reacher novel. It begins in customary Lee Child style, which is … Continue reading Review: Night School (Jack Reacher #21) by Lee Child

We no longer question whether we’ll get a new Jack Reacher novel each year. Excitement for each new instalment in Lee Child’s long-running series is based on which city or town Reacher will wander into next, and the type of depravity he’ll face up against. By now, with twenty novels under his belt, we are … Continue reading Review: Make Me by Lee Child

PERSONAL, the nineteenth Jack Reacher novel, is a perfectly adequate thriller. There’s the requisite action and intrigue that aficionados demand, plus a villain with exaggerated physical dimensions who provides an actual physical threat to Reacher, and while there is enough here to sate irregular thriller readers who are perhaps not entirely cognizant of the genre’s … Continue reading Review: Personal by Lee Child

Lee Child’s 17th Jack Reacher novel, A WANTED MAN, suffered from a major tonal shift in its third act, which had Reacher in full John McClane mode, blasting away at a facility full of bad guys, facing odds that seemed just a tad too insurmountable. For the first time, Reacher flirted with the dark abyss … Continue reading Review: Never Go Back by Lee Child

DEEP DOWN presents a younger Jack Reacher than we’re used to, in his mid-twenties, tasked with identifying a traitor operating inside the Capitol, selling military secrets to enemies unknown. The catch? The traitor must be identified clandestinely; and all four suspects are women. Lee Child emphasises Reacher’s youth and relative inexperience as he questions his … Continue reading Review: Deep Down by Lee Child