Books - Review

Jack Reacher (inside leg 95cm) is kidnapped along with the lovely Holly (FBI agent and president's god daughter) when she picks up her dry cleaning one day. Jack, ex-military police, is fortunately very good at hitting people, picking locks, escaping and shooting accurately over great distances. Holly would probably be able to look after herself anyway if she hadn't damaged her cruciate ligament playing soccer the other day. Anyway, their captors turn out to be weird white supremacist types trying to build their own nation in Montana, but not surprisingly, they are no match for Jack and Holly.

Bit of a page-turner, but very silly. I liked having Jack's CV inside the front cover - always useful to be able to check the hero's inside leg measurement at any time.

Reacher wanders into a couple of weird small towns called Hope and Despair. Despair is dominated by a big metal recycling plant led by religious nutter who wants to build a dirty bomb. Hope has an attractive woman cop. Fist fights and car chases ensue.

Cerebral, thought-provoking and emotionally draining. This book is none of these things. Usual page-turning nonsense.

Jack Reacher is on a bus that crashes in (very) snowy conditions in North Dakota. He assists in getting the passengers to safety in the nearest small town and then decides to stick around and help the local cops with their current witness protection problem. Their main problem is that the town officials have historically brokered a deal with the local prison such that whenever the emergency siren at the prison sounds (eg for a riot or a break-out) all cops have to attend the prison, immediately, no exceptions. Even the four that are assigned to witness protection. These four are of course the only thing standing between the witness (a brave old lady with apple cheeks and good taste in literature) and a horrible death. So when the siren goes off - old lady apple cheeks would be in deep trouble - if it wasn't for Jack of course. Unless he happens to be out in the freezing cold just at the wrong moment...

Great page turner thriller. Really odd plot device with prison/cops relationship!

The CIA learn that an American in Hamburg is offering to sell something for $100,000,000 to a known terrorist group. Jack Reacher (who is currently in the Military Police again - I suppose if I read them in the right order I would understand his career path a bit better), and some colleagues from the CIA and FBI work together (hence Night School) to track the baddies, find out what is for sale and save the world from doom. Defeating the Hamburg neo-Nazi gang on the way too, of course.

Hmmmmm. Enjoyable nonsense really. Plenty more where that came from too, I wonder who has written more - Grisham or Child?

Two criminal gangs, Albanian and Ukrainian, have divided up a city and mostly operate under an uneasy truce. But then Jack Reacher turns up defending an old man who owes thousands to a money-lender, and things start to spiral out of control as he seeks justice and fairness for all in his own inimitable way.

Great page-turner. Read this in one day while off sick with Laila and her cold.

Jack Reacher randomly finds a West Point class ring in a pawn shop and becomes concerned that the original owner may need help. You've got to be desperate to pawn your West Point ring, right? So off he goes, tracking his quarry, encountering nasty criminals on the way, to eventually discover the ring's owner is indeed in need of help, having become addicted to high quality stolen/smuggled prescription opioids. Also, she has a beautiful twin sister, which is nice. And some cowboy friends to protect her.

Marvellous.

Jack is doing bit more research on his family tree when he happens across a gang of nasty thugs who kidnap people and then abandon them in the woods to be hunted down by vicious wealthy people with bows and arrows who pay for the privilege. Jack does not approve of this activity and takes steps to stop it.

Yep, all good.

Jack Reacher once more arrives in a town in trouble. This time the town has suffered a cyber attack and is being held to ransom by someone. The town blames the IT chap who failed to get the backups done properly - but was it really his fault? Jack decides he can help out.

This one actually written by both Lee and his younger brother Andrew. Still, you can't tell. Good plot though - if in doubt, blame the datawarehouse manager I always say.

Someone attempts to assassinate the French president, with a ridiculously accurate long-range rifle shot. Only three people in the world could pull off such a shot and Reacher is tasked with finding the assassin. But what if it's someone he knows - maybe with a bit of a historical grudge against Reacher himself? That would make it very interesting.

Great page-turning adventure!

Reacher is duty MP when a dead general is found in a nearby sleazy motel room. It's clearly a heart attack - but Reacher becomes justifiably suspicious when the general's wife is found murdered shortly afterwards. And where the heck is the agenda for the important meeting the general was supposed to attend? Could there be a copy in the general's missing briefcase?

Quite entertaining, and Reacher manages to restrain himself to only a couple of slow-motion punch-ups.

Reacher rocks up in a tiny town called Mother's Rest, just by luck really, but he stumbles on a horrible group of people who are intent on making money out of other people's misery and fear. Internet based horribleness. So Reacher decides to do something about it, helped by a rather nice ex-FBI lady.

Yep, all good.

Bad guy is scamming dead veteran's families by pretending he has found their sons alive. Reacher decides this is a bad thing and it should be stopped.

One of the earlier ones I think, seemed a bit less formulaic.

Reacher stumbles across a dreadful evil criminal plot, this time to do with trafficking children for awful purposes. He goes about stopping the evil-doers and unleashing retribution. They are so evil this time, it's Worth Dying For. Although he doesn't die of course. Oops, spoiler.

Yep, gripping thriller.

A serial killer appears to be targeting ex-service women - all of whom left the service following their complaints of mistreatment. The FBI have a top psychological profiling team on the case, but they arrest a certain Jack Reacher. Surely some mistake? Jack, aided by a tall, athletic, attractive young FBI agent, seeks the truth.

Great stuff.

Jack gets arrested for a murder he didn't commit, and then ends up helping to solve the mystery, which is to do with a massive counterfeiting operation, the criminal masterminds of which have paid off virtually the whole of a small town to keep their secret.

Good thriller.

I can't remember a thing about this one. A brief scan of the book suggests that Reacher randomly meets someone who needs his help, stays in some motels and provides some help to someone, generally by means of beating people up or shooting them. But you knew that already. Oh, and most of it is set in a hot part of the USA, so there is more sweat than usual.

Great book.

Okay, so this one is the money counterfeiters one. Or gun-running. Can't remember, doesn't matter. They run a legitimate rug business but hide dollar bills (or guns) in them or something. But the operatives are being coerced by some really horrible people, so their guilt is not as clear cut as it might be. Anyway, Reacher helps a rogue FBI team to stage a murder so he can be recruited by the gang and then he manages to resolve everything to the satisfaction of most people. Some of this may be inaccurate.

Awesome. Read it on the plane to/from UK and Australia!

Some retired army sniper kills 5 civilians in a random shooting spree. Once arrested he refuses to speak except to say 'Get Jack Reacher.' So they get Jack Reacher and he solves the case.

Borrowed this from Nick in Busselton and read it on the plane on the way home to Auckland. It was more entertaining than playing 3 hours of Angry Birds.

Reacher is walking along, minding his own business when a lady surprises him by pretending to be dead in a crashed jeep. She turns out to be ex-army and ex-FBI, and manages to persuade him to help find her brother, who has got mixed up with some bad guys.

Yep, here we go again.

The secret service sort of recruit Reacher to help them audit their procedures for bodyguarding the VP of the USA. He agrees to help mainly because the secret agent who asks for his help happens to be the ex-lover of his now-dead brother, Joe. He is helped by a female ex-colleague, whose name escapes me, but was highly competent, independent and, natch, attractive. Anyway it turns out that there is an actual threat against the VP, so Reacher and colleague end up helping for real.

Not bad.

Reacher has to solve a crime, hit people and do stuff with guns. Can't remember much else.

Do your reviews as you go along you fool.

Reacher is in New York when he happens to witness some men handing over $1,000,000 in ransom money. He is subsequently recruited by wealthy ex-military, now mercenary leader type who claims his wife and daughter have been kidnapped. Reacher gets onto it of course, but realises on the way that not all is as it seems. Finishes up with a siege on a farm in Norfolk, UK.

I wonder how many Jack Reacher books it is possible to read on the trot? One...

Reacher is on a late night subway train when he realises one of his fellow passengers is showing all the classic symptoms of a suicide bomber. He tries to talk her down, but she chooses to shoot herself, sadly. The cops don't seem keen on pursuing the case so Jack decides to investigate himself. He pursues a dodgy senator and a couple of female Al Qaeda terrorists with a history of horrible tortures in Afghanistan, and the FBI also seem to want to deflect him from the truth. However, as we know, Jack is pretty unstoppable when it comes to pursuing the truth. It turns out that the senator was once photographed in Afghanistan in a compromising situation, and everyone wants to get hold of the photo to publish/destroy it.

Jolly good stuff. Two...

There is a large army base in Mississippi near a small town. A girl is murdered in the small town and Captain Riley, from the nearby base, is the prime suspect. But the army wants to cover up Cpt. Riley's involvement and Reacher, sent to investigate, finds himself up against an official smokescreen hiding corruption, lies and murder. Cpt Riley's senator father in fact turns out to be at the root of the trouble, so Jack implements his own form of justice on father and son, making good use of the local level crossing. However, as a side effect, Reacher finds he has to resign from the army (or be given only rubbish tasks for the rest of his life).

Brilliant. Three...

Reacher is hitch hiking to Virginia when he is picked up by two men and a woman somewhere in Iowa. They have to navigate a series of roadblocks set up by the police, and it turns out that someone has been killed in an old pumping station not far from where Reacher got his lift. Reacher gets more suspicious when the woman in the car starts winking at him in code, his bottle of water is not as warm as it should be and the petrol gauge appears to be faulty. He realises that, by a complete coincidence, he is once again caught up in a vicious and complex plot which the authorities seem unable to sort out, so it'll have to be him again. He ends up storming a concrete bunker (old missile silo) in order to rescue a captured FBI agent and bring down a terrorist ring of money-lenders. But not before a lot of driving around Iowa with a rather nice lady FBI agent, who is a bit unlucky when they get to the missile silo.

Fabulous! It turns out that it is possible to read no fewer than FOUR Jack Reacher books in a row. Wow.

Reacher witnesses a murder as a woman is pushed under a bus. The local cops would like to classify it as suicide and close the file, but Reacher pursues justice. This leads him to a privately run prison where shady deals are done and there is an evil trade in progress.

Reacher wins, bad guys lose.

Reacher is in a car crash and wakes up handcuffed to a bed. This annoys him no end and he seeks revenge and uncovers a nasty plot on the way so he gets to foil that too!

Yep, another one. He (they) writes them, I read them.

Jack pops into a coffee shop and has a chance encounter with a baddie, who he sorts out. He also accidentally receives a plea for help from a stranger who is being blackmailed by a warmongering evil guy who sells bodies of dead soldiers for a million bucks each. So he's really bad. So Reacher sorts him out too. Hooray!

This was not very good, although I did read it in one day so marks for page-turning-ness.