He stands at 6’5” with muscles and a face that seem to attract women wherever he goes. He hops Greyhound buses around the U.S. and never stays in one town longer than necessary. He carries nothing on his person but a toothbrush, and in later years, a bank card. He’s a blues enthusiast and a coffee addict. He’s a former military policeman, he can shoot, he can brawl, he can run, and he can persuade and intimidate his enemies. There seems to be very little Jack Reacher cannot do, and with 24 novels, more than a dozen short stories, and two films starring Tom Cruise to his name, he’s still going strong.
Jack Reacher was the first series I picked up after graduating a little over two years ago, on the suggestion of my father. After having read nothing but assigned nonfiction and literary classics throughout the entirety of my college career, it was absolutely refreshing to read Lee Child’s thrillers for the first time. Child admits he doesn’t aim to write with overly elaborate wordplay or any kind of deep imagery common to the literary world, which is what I was accustomed to; alternately, he writes direct, straightforward, plot and character-driven thrillers. This is not to say the Child’s mysteries are easily solved, or that the characters are dry or predictable, but that the books are meant to be enjoyed without the need for any over-analyzing. I’d forgotten the sheer joy of reading a book for fun, and I found myself legitimately excited to find out what would happen in each entry in the series I read.
Jack Reacher is enigmatic in his demeanor yet surprisingly straightforward in his motivations: when Reacher acts, it’s because someone has wronged him, a close friend, or even a total stranger, and Reacher seeks revenge on their behalf. And no matter what town he arrives in, there is always a wrong to be righted. In the first novel, Killing Floor, he’s falsely accused of murder in small-town Georgia and aims to not only clear his name, but to track down the real culprit and shut down the nefarious operation calling the shots behind the scenes. In Persuader, he’s asked to rescue a trapped DEA agent and subsequently breaks into a crime lord’s mansion in rural Maine, encountering some unfinished business from his own military past. In Midnight Line, he spies a ring in a pawn shop in Wisconsin belonging to a West Point graduate, and his attempt to track down its owner leads him to an opioid enterprise that is destroying lives. There’s always an adventure that Reacher just happens upon no matter where he gets off the Greyhound, almost as if the rising point of the action was waiting for him to arrive. Reacher always delivers a response to the situation that doesn’t necessarily make him the most morally high-ground man out there, but a hero nonetheless.
Reacher’s most recent appearance is in the upcoming Blue Moon, released today, October 29th. He chooses to disembark the Greyhound as he sees an elderly man with a large envelope of cash being followed by a greedy-looking gentleman, and he thwarts the potential mugger. Reacher escorts the elderly man, Aaron Shevick, home where he learns Mr. Shevick and his wife are in debt to a loan shark belonging to the local Ukrainian gang. When Reacher offers to meet with the loan shark, he impersonates Aaron Shevick and gets subsequently caught up in a gang war between the Ukrainians and the rival Albanians. He helps the Shevicks come up with the money they need to pay their uninsured daughters’ medical expenses, seeks to help a waitress who captures Reacher’s eye get even with her own personal enemy, and assists various other people with their related goals throughout the book.
We have a typical setup for a Reacher novel: a small hook that causes Reacher to stop in town (Aaron Shevick’s mugging), a motivation for him to stay in town (his involvement with the Ukrainian gang), and a current news topic that relates Reacher’s fictional U.S.A. to our own (rising costs of healthcare, fake news, and others that I’d hate to spoil for you).
What sets Blue Moon apart from the other Reacher novels is a slight change in the way Reacher usually handles situations. His M.O. is usually to intimidate the target as best as he can first using his appearance and wordplay, with violence coming as a second option, but Blue Moon is packed with action scenes that show Reacher relying on his physical capabilities before using diplomacy. Given the brutality shown by the members of each rival gang, it seems as if Reacher is simply matching the violence they demonstrate toward each other; if you plan to read this entry in the series, prepare yourself for quite a bit of gunfire.
Why should you read Jack Reacher? Reacher’s sparked a love for reading fiction in me again that I’d long forgotten. He’s a fascinating man who seems to perform superhuman yet realistic feats at times when it seems like there’s no other way out. If you have an appreciation for mysteries and thrillers like I do, Jack Reacher is a series you absolutely cannot pass up. Check out Blue Moon today if you’re interested, and if you can’t wait until then to get started, come by Lemuria and ask for me. I’ll be happy to chat with you all day long about my unexpected favorite thriller series.
Signed first editions of Blue Moon: A Jack Reacher Novel are available in our online store.
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