NOTHING to LOSE (Jack Reacher #12) (audiobook) by Lee Child

 

Published by Random House Audio in 2008.

Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 14 hours, 25 minutes.
Unabridged.

I think that I have worked my way through all of the Jack Reacher novels and short stories over the last 5 years. Nothing to Lose is the last one (I think). I read them all out of order, but fans know that that is okay since they were never written in order in the first place.

Sadly, this was one of the weakest of the entire very large collection. 

Reacher is travelling from Maine to San Diego just to see the country. He notes that Colorado has two towns with interesting names very close to one another: Hope and Despair.

The author, Lee Child.

Hope is a pleasant enough place with a hardware store and a hotel and diner. Reacher decides to hike to nearby despair and is immediately arrested for being a vagrant. Technically, he is a vagrant. He has no job, no fixed address and no plans to acquire either. 

Despair locks him up (after a bit of a fight) and runs him through a kangaroo court, finds him guilty and expels him from the town limits, which is about halfway to the town of Hope. Reacher meets up with the police chief of Hope, discusses the weird behavior of Hope's town government. And...he heads back for more.

He also finds a lot more than ever imagined he would...

This book felt disconnected from reality a lot more than the average Jack Reacher book. I don't mean that as an insult to the series, but let's face it - a giant ex-soldier beating the crap out of groups of big men in the middle of the street in every book is just nor normal behavior. 

Anyway, the whole book seemed sort of half-baked all the way through and Reacher's choice on how to end things seemed completely out of character considering the long-term implications (decades, maybe even centuries) of his choice. 

Dick Hill read the audiobook and he is my all-time favorite audiobook reader. He "gets" Jack Reacher.

Despite Dick Hill's reading, I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: NOTHING to LOSE by Lee Child.

THE AFFAIR (Jack Reacher #16) (audiobook) by Lee Child

 

Published by Random House Audio in 2011.

Read by Dick Hill.

Duration: 14 hours, 5 minutes.

Unabridged

Any fan of the Jack Reacher series knows that they are not written in chronological order. The Affair is set in Reacher's later years in the Army. He is a major and, as fans know, he is part of the military police. Chronologically, it is set directly before the events of The Killing Floor, the first Jack Reacher book that was published.

Jack Reacher has been sent to Mississippi as part of a two man team to investigate a murder of a young woman that took place outside of a military base. It is presumed that the murderer was a soldier on base, maybe even the captain of a team of Rangers that have been shuttling in and out of Kosovo on secret missions as part of the Balkan civil war that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia.

That is a problem because this captain is very connected politically. His father is a U.S. Senator that is on the committee that helps set the military budget. 

The author, Lee Child

Reacher is part of a two man team. The other guy has been officially sent to the base to solve the murder - everyone knows he is coming. Reacher has been ordered to assume the role of a drifter - an ex-military guy with no home who has come into town. His job is to keep an eye on the local police and see if they have made any progress on the case and to report it. He has been given multiple warnings that this will be a sensitive case and he should tread lightly. Reacher decides that solving the case would be a good thing, even if it is politically unpopular.

When Reacher discovers that it's not just one murder but three very similar murders of local girls he knows that he is in for much more than he bargained for...

If you have read a few books in this series, you know how they all go. Reacher comes to town, identifies a problem and starts working towards resolving it. Along the way he drinks gallons of coffee, eats in a diner, buys replacement clothing and meets an extremely talented female professional (Lee Child has no problem doling out the talent to women and men in equal measure in his stories) and does a lot of walking.

This was a solid Reacher story. Not the best, certainly not a bad one. A couple of the side stories had some real emotional resonance. The main story doesn't quite hold up to intense scrutiny so don't do that - enjoy the story and move on. 

Not all Reacher books do this, but this one has multiple sex scenes with a fetish thrown in. There were six scenes - I know this because Reacher keeps counting them as part of a series of observations about how the first time is special, the second time can be a better experience and so on. The whole thing got tiresome for me and one of them seemed even weirder since it happened right after an extremely sad and tragic event that had an element of their fetish worked in with it. It would have soured me from it, but I think Lee Child was on a roll of some sort and wanted to keep on going with it.

Dick Hill read the audiobook. Dick Hill is the reason that I quit reading the series as physical books. He is my favorite audiobook reader (sadly, now retired) and I just think that he had a feel for reading Reacher's dialogue. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Affair (Jack Reacher #16) by Lee Child.

THE CHRISTMAS SCORPION (Jack Reacher #22.5) (kindle) (short story) by Lee Child

Published in 2018 by Delacorte Press.

In this 26 page short story, Reacher is near Barstow, California. He always heads south for the winter and he assumed that Barstow would be south enough to avoid the winter cold. But, a once-in-a-lifetime blizzard hits the area, the power is cut off, the phones are down and Reacher is walking through three feet of snow along an impassable highway (to cars, at least).

He stumbles upon a bar and inside finds a bartender an older couple and two

British soldiers...

The Christmas Scorpion is exclusively published as an e-book. Lee Child was a prolific author (he has since retired) and it is not uncommon for him to generate additional short stories featuring Jack Reacher. These short stories are a mixed bag, at best.

I don't know Lee Child's writing process. Some authors plan out every detail meticulously before they start writing, others claim to make up the entire story as they go along - they are finding out what happens as they write. If Lee Child writes uses the second model, many of his short stories feel like novels that he started but just didn't build enough momentum to become full-fledged novels.

This short story would not be a good place to start with Jack Reacher. If you are a big fan of this series, you might consider reading it just to check it off of your list. It only costs $1.99 of Amazon. I borrowed from my local library on its e-book platform.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. I think it could have been expanded into more, but it wasn't so there it is - an interesting start with a hurried ending.

It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Christmas Scorpion by Lee Child.

CLEANING the GOLD: A JACK REACHER and WILL TRENT SHORT STORY by Karin Slaughter and Lee Child

Published in 2019 by HarperAudio.
Read by Eric Jason Martin and Jeff Harding.
Duration: 2 hours, 4 minutes.
Unabridged.

The title says this is a short story, but the print version of Cleaning the Gold is 129 pages and I would call that a novella.

Karin Slaughter's Will Trent character works with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He is working on a cold case murder based on the activities of the very first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor. Trent is looking for Jack Reacher based on a 20 year old DNA sample.

Reacher is working in Fort Knox and Trent assumes an undercover identity to

Pallets of gold in Fort Knox - they are featured
in the audiobook.

find him...

The book is all written in third person with Slaughter writing the Will Trent sections and Child writing the Reacher sections.

Lee Child is one of my favorites, but Karin Slaughter is certainly not. In fact, she's one of the few authors I refuse to read any longer. Just to compare, including this review I have reviewed 26 Jack Reacher books or short stories and just 3 Karin Slaughter books. This novella suffers from being mostly written by Karin Slaughter.

The readers were okay. One read for Will Trent, the other for Jack Reacher. The reader for Jack Reacher was doing his best to sound like Dick Hill, the reader that has read most of Lee Child's audiobooks.

In the end, this wasn't much of a story. There were amusing observations about Jack Reacher, but the story wasn't much. Reacher did most of the work and even then they made leaps of deduction that I couldn't fathom.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5 (mostly because of the aforementioned observations about Reacher and the fact that I learned a few things about the gold reserves at Fort Knox. I can only recommend it if you are trying to round out your Jack Reacher or Will Trent collection. This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: CLEANING the GOLD: A JACK REACHER and WILL TRENT SHORT STORY by Karin Slaughter and Lee Child.

PERSUADER (Jack Reacher #7 ) by Lee Child

Originally published in 2003.

Note: Lee Child wrote his books out of chronological order. In chronological order, this would be book #10.

This book starts out with a very different sort of introduction. I don't want to spoil it so I will skip ahead a bit.

Reacher is out to get a man who he thought he killed years before. He has some sort of business arrangement with a family with underworld connections in Maine that lives in a castle-like mansion on the coast. Reacher works his way inside the organization and waits for his opportunity. Also, he is on the lookout for a missing DEA agent who is thought to have been kidnapped by the organization and is being held somewhere.

Reacher is not sure who he can trust as he tries to figure out what is really going on...

This story is more complicated than most Reacher stories. The action is ridiculous, as always - but that's one of the reasons you read a Jack Reacher book.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Persuader by Lee Child.

NOT A DRILL (Jack Reacher #18.5) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published in 2014 by Random House Audio.

Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 1 hour, 27 minutes.
Unabridged

Lee Child was a prolific writer of Jack Reacher stories. I say was because he recently announced his intention to stop writing those stories. His brother will start writing them instead.

Child wrote numerous books and short stories in no particular order, bouncing around the timeline of Jack Reacher's life. Not a Drill is set in Maine. I presume it fits in on the timeline with the other Reacher stories that take place in Maine and New England.

Jack Reacher is hitchhiking to the end of I-95 at the U.S.-Canada border. Another of his books starts at the other end of I-95 down by Miami, Florida and Reacher makes a point that he wants to have traveled from one end of the road to the other.

Once he gets there, he gets out and is soon picked up by three younger Canadians who are headed to a four day long hiking trip. Their trail starts at one town and ends up at another. Reacher decides to go with them to the trail head because he has nothing else to do. But, when the military shows up, things start to get weird...

Not a Drill is a short story or perhaps a novella (depending on how you want to interpret those terms). To me, it felt like this story was the beginning of a novel that never really blossomed into a book-length story. But, this story is just too short to be much of anything at all. Very forgettable.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found as part of a larger collection on Amazon.com here: NOT A DRILL (Jack Reacher #18.5) (audiobook) by Lee Child.

GONE TOMORROW (audiobook) (Jack Reacher #13) by Lee Child

Jack Reacher vs. The Patriot Act

Published by Random House Audio in 2009.
Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 14 hours, 47 minutes.
Unabridged.

In Gone Tomorrow, Jack Reacher is in New York City, riding the subway after taking in a late night show in a bar. He notices a woman who is exhibiting all of the signs of being a suicide bomber that he learned years ago while being trained in Israel. When Reacher intervenes, he gets way more than he bargained for and gets sucked into a complicated mess and discovers that the powers granted to the federal government by the Patriot Act are not to be trifled with.

The audiobook was read by multiple award-winning reader Dick Hill. He is my favorite reader of the Jack Reacher novels. But, even Dick Hill couldn't save some of the convoluted dialogue that comes from the villain's mouth as the book progresses. I was reminded of the famous line from Harrison Ford as he was filming Star Wars. He told George Lucas, " George! You can type this s***, but you sure can't say it!" 

The villain's lines are so convoluted, so wordy and so long-winded that I can't believe anyone would actually hang around to hear them delivered. There was no way that the author, Lee Child, actually read those lines out loud to see if they worked. I felt sorry for Dick Hill getting ambushed with them.

Nonetheless, the story was good enough to justify 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child.

BLUE MOON (Jack Reacher #24) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Random House Audio in October of 2019.
Read by Scott Brick.
Duration: 11 hours, 21 minutes.
Unabridged.

In Blue Moon, Jack Reacher is traveling by bus when he notices a sleeping old man with a bank envelope full of cash falling out of his pocket. He also notices that another man has noticed the money and clearly wants to steal it. When the old man and the potential thief get off of the bus in an unfamiliar city, Reacher follows and intervenes.

But, as always seems to happen, Reacher gets involved in something deeper. This time around it is really bad...

This was an entertaining audiobook. Scott Brick has replaced Dick Hill as the voice of Jack Reacher and I am still getting used to that because I am a major fan of Dick Hill. But, Scott Brick is growing on me.

This was a much bloodier Reacher novel than most. Reacher has never had a problem with violence, but in this novel he takes it to a new level. It seemed out of character to me.

Still, I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: BLUE MOON (Jack Reacher #24) (audiobook) by Lee Child.

TRIPWIRE (Jack Reacher #3) by Lee Child

First published in 1999.

Tripwire is the third book in publishing order in the Jack Reacher series (the sixth in chronological order - as of right now).

Jack Reacher starts out in the Florida Keys. He is digging swimming pools by hand during the day, working as a bouncer in a strip club at night and drinking lots of bottled water. It is mindless work, but he is getting enjoying that aspect of it. Then, a man from New York City comes to the bar where he is drinking a bottled water and asks if anyone knows Jack Reacher.

Reacher lies and says he never heard of the guy.

Composition with Red Blue and Yellow 
by Piet Mondrian. Reacher's favorite piece of art,
according to this novel.

Two more guys from New York City find Reacher at the strip club. They are different than the first guy - pushier and rougher.  Reacher has to get physical with them. When he finds the first guy dead on the street, he decides to head off to New York City to see if he can figure out who is looking for him.

What he finds, surprises him and takes him back in time in more than one way...

This is an early Reacher novel and it doesn't have the normal rhythms that you find later on (as of today there are 24 books and 18 short stories in the series). It's a good action novel, but it feels a little different than the rest of the series.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Tripwire by Lee Child. 

WORTH DYING FOR (JACK REACHER #15) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published in 2010 by Random House Audio.
Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 13 hours, 45 minutes.
Unabridged.

Fresh off of the action in 61 Hours, Jack Reacher is hitching his way to Virginia. He is nursing his injuries from that adventure and has made it from South Dakota to a lonely hotel in rural Nebraska.

The action in Worth Dying For starts with Reacher drinking coffee at the hotel bar. A drunk patron gets a call. Turns out he's also the local doctor and a local woman called to help her treat a bloody nose that won't stop bleeding. Reacher shames him into going to treat the woman.

Reacher suspects she's a victim of spousal abuse and it turns out he's correct. The doctor has been told not to treat her by her husband's family. They rule the area with an iron fist and maintain a crew of 10 former Nebraska Cornhusker college football players to make sure no one steps out of line.

Reacher steps out of line, though. He tracks down the abused woman's husband, takes out his bodyguard, breaks the husband's nose and heads back to his hotel room.

Reacher is warned: "You started a war. They want to finish it."

Turns out, the warning was correct.

This is my 21st review of a Jack Reacher book or short story. They go up and down. Lately, I've been on a streak of mediocre Reacher stories. I am happy to say that this one was pretty good. It's been padded with too much discussion and extras from time to time, but it was a solid story.

New readers to the series could jump in with this one and not really miss much. In this story, Reacher once again takes on the classic Western role of the drifter that comes into town and helps the locals deal with some bad guys. It's not a new story (even for this series it is the most common theme), but it is a good one.

The audiobook was read by Dick Hill. Hill has recently retired, but I think that he really nails the Jack Reacher novels.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WORTH DYING FOR (JACK REACHER #15) (audiobook) by Lee Child.

Updated January 1, 2025.

PAST TENSE: A JACK REACHER NOVEL by Lee Child (audiobook)

Published in 2018 by Random House Audio.
Read by Scott Brick.
Duration: 12 hours, 51 minutes.
Unabridged.

Jack Reacher is in New Hampshire and is working his way cross-country to San Diego. As normal, in Past Tense he is hitchhiking. He gets dropped off near the town where his father was born, Laconia. He has never been there and decides to check it out. His father has been dead for thirty years but he might find someone who remembers him.  The more  digs, the more he finds that this father's backstory doesn't quite jive with what he is discovering on the ground...

Meanwhile, a Canadian couple is travelling through New Hampshire on their way to New York City. They are carrying a mysterious cargo in the trunk of their rattletrap Honda. When the Honda dies in the parking lot of a lonely hotel, the owners of the hotel convince the couple to check in for the night and try to find a mechanic in the morning. But, something doesn't seem right...

This book had all of the pieces to make a perfectly good Jack Reacher novel - Reacher's mysterious family problems (a semi-constant theme throughout the series), Reacher rolling into town and finding a wrong that needs to be corrected and clever local people with brave hearts to help him.

But, this book became a tedious mess that just never gels into a consistent plot. It takes nearly 25% of the book for Reacher (or anyone) to get into any sort of action, and that was obviously a plotting device designed to make it difficult for Reacher to stay in town. Eventually, Reacher picks fights with three different groups of people in this small New Hampshire town and its nearby surroundings (there simply must be something in the water to cause all of these problems). Even though this sounds like a lot of action, it was surprisingly slow.

It was almost like there were pieces of three separate books laying around and Lee Child just mashed them together into this book. There are flashes of clever writing and good action, but there is simply too much of watching Jack Reacher perform a genealogical investigation throughout the book. This was a wasted opportunity.

This is the first audiobook in the post-Dick Hill era. Dick Hill read almost all of the previous 23 novels and the assorted short stories and I enjoyed them thoroughly. Scott Brick is a solid choice to replace Hill (Hill has retired from reading audiobooks). I am sure that my dislike of this book was not due to Scott Brick. It's too bad that his debut book was this dud.

So, this is my worst rating of a Jack Reacher novel - 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: PAST TENSE: A JACK REACHER NOVEL by Lee Child.

MAKE ME (Jack Reacher #20) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published in 2015 by Random House Audio.
Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 14 hours, 3 minutes.
Unabridged.

Make Me is the 20th novel-length entry in the Jack Reacher series. But, readers of the series know that the books are not written in any particular order and there are a lot of short stories and novellas in the series as well. If you are trying to read everything in chronological order (from Reacher's point of view), this is entry number 37.

In the middle of the night, Jack Reacher gets off of a train bound for Chicago in an small town in Oklahoma named Mother's Rest. Yes, Mother's Rest. And, no, no one seems to know why it is named that.

He is immediately met by a former FBI agent turned private detective named Michelle Chang. She had initially confused him for an associate of hers that has gone missing in Mother's Rest. Reacher is intrigued by the situation (and the fact that no one in town seems to have any idea where the name came from) and starts to poke around a bit on his own. The reaction he gets convinces him that there is definitely something going on in this little town and it gets deeper and more dangerous than anyone had anticipated...

There are some things that are quite good about this book. For the first time, Jack Reacher actually has to admit to the reality that he is aging. There is a real detective story here and it is quite interesting. And, there is a look into the dark corners of the internet, which is also interesting. But, there are times when the story seems to be "paint by numbers", especially in the mandatory big fight scene. What would have been a 45 second fight is slowed down and over-analyzed to the point that it gets boring. It goes on and on and on. Also, the ending (no spoilers) was both stomach-turning and unsatisfying.

The audiobook was read by Dick Hill who was, in my mind, one of the best audiobook readers I have ever heard. I say "was" because he has since retired Hill has a special connection with this series and Lee Child's writing style, a topic he brings up in this interview about his retirement. Any problems in this book were not caused by the reader, but rather by the author who just needed to cut a 14 hour book down to a 11 or 12 hour book.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It was good to keep up with Jack Reacher but this was not up to the usual standards of the series.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: MAKE ME (Jack Reacher #20) by Lee Child.

ONE SHOT (A Jack Reacher Novel) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2005.

Read by Dick Hill.

Duration: 14 hours, 37 minutes.

Unabridged.

Technically, One Shot is the ninth Jack Reacher book that Lee Child has published, but since Lee Child doesn't write the books "in order" there are two broad time periods that Jack Reacher novels occur in: 1) In the Army, 2) post-Army. This is post-army book. It is also the book that inspired the first Tom Cruise Jack Reacher movie, but if you have seen the movie you can read this book and have an entirely different experience. It inspired the movie, the movie didn't follow it too closely.

Reacher doesn't appear for the first hour and ten minutes of this audiobook. Instead, the readers are witness to a mass shooting in southern Indiana that draws Reacher from Florida because he knew the accused shooter in the Army. Once he arrives, Reacher immediately knows that something off and finds himself in a rare moral quandary. But, Reacher figures out how to proceed once it becomes obvious that someone really wants him to leave Indiana...

I have often wondered when Jack Reacher was going to have an adventure in my native Hoosier state - he goes through it as he wanders America, but never seems to stop. I can't tell if Lee Child, a Brit, actually visited Indiana to research this book - he certainly picks on the presence of the limestone quarries that run through southwest Indiana throughout the book. My guess is that this book is set in Evansville or a fictional hybrid of Evansville, Vincennes and Bedford.

So, how is the story? It's a pretty good mystery that takes a hard surprise turn in the first third of the book and had this reader wondering how all of the little pieces clicked into place until the last few minutes of the audiobook. In that sense, it was a success. But, it moved fairly slowly. This audiobook is 14+ hours long. Editing out an hour would have helped it move along nicely.

Dick Hill read the audiobook. He is my all-time favorite audiobook reader and he is the reason that I quit reading this series as books and only listen to it as audiobooks.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found in multiple formats on Amazon.com here: One Shot (A Jack Reacher Novel) by Lee Child.

THE MIDNIGHT LINE: A JACK REACHER NOVEL (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Random House Audio in 2017.
Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 13 hours, 6 minutes.
Unabridged.

Jack Reacher is on the road again in The Midnight Line. Fans of the series know that Reacher just can't stay in one place too long so he is on a bus out of Chicago. The bus stops in a Wisconsin town for a "comfort stop" and Reacher decides to stretch his legs. He is window shopping in a pawn shop window and sees a woman's ring. It is a Class of 2005 West Point ring and he wonders how it ended up there. He is also a graduate of West Point (from 20+ years before that) and he knows that no one just gives up their ring.

Reacher lets the bus go on without him, buys the ring and starts backtracking how it ended up in the pawn shop. Right away, he develops a lot of resistance in the form of lies and eventually a serious attempt to drive him away. Of course, all of this makes Reacher even more determined to figure it out. Besides, what else does have to do...?

This is much more of a detective story than most Reacher books. Along the way, Reacher picks up an entourage of sorts. It is not unusual for him to pick up people along the way, but the vehicles get a bit crowded from time-to-time in this one. Some of the topics come straight from the headlines, others are a little more philosophical. I am rating it 5 stars, but really it's more of a 4.5 stars. It drags a bit about 80% into the book, right when everything starts to come together. But, everything before that is interesting and the ending is as well.

Dick Hill read this audiobook - he has read most of this series and he is great. There's a reason why he has won so many audiobook awards.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE MIDNIGHT LINE: A JACK REACHER NOVEL by Lee Child.

NIGHT SCHOOL (Jack Reacher #21) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Random House Audio in 2016.
Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 13 hours, 7 minutes
Unabridged.

Fans of Jack Reacher know that the Lee Child does not write his books in a linear pattern - he bounces around on the Jack Reacher timeline quite a bit. Night School is set in the 1990's when Reacher was still in the military. Reacher has just come off of a secret mission in the Balkans.  He helped find and eliminate war criminals from the fighting that erupted in the wake of the collapse of Yugoslavia. It was the kind of mission that the government was glad to have done, but not glad to acknowledge.

Reacher receives a medal in a private ceremony and then is sent off to an inter-agency training seminar in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. But, it turns out that there are only two other people at this "training" - an FBI agent and a CIA agent that are also fresh off of missions that the government was glad to have done, but not glad to acknowledge.

The State Department has gathered them together as a team of go-getters to figure out what is behind a piece of intelligence that they have picked up thanks to an embedded operative - a terror network is offering $100 million for something to a seller in Germany. Reacher and company are being asked to figure out what is for sale and how they can get it before the bad guys do without losing the operative...

This is my fifteenth Jack Reacher book and it was one of the best. It's got some action, but mostly it is a detective story with really big consequences if it is not solved soon.

Dick Hill read this audiobook. He reads most of this series and that is a very, very good thing because Dick Hill has nailed the narration and character voices perfectly.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: Night School by Lee Child.

RUNNING BLIND (Jack Reacher #4) by Lee Child

Originally published in book form in 2000.

Published by Penguin Audio in 2013
Read by Johnathan McClain
Duration: 13 hours, 45 minutes
Unabridged

In Running Blind Jack Reacher is a suspect in an FBI investigation of several bizarre murders of women that were involved in sexual harassment and/or rape investigations that he conducted while he served as a military policeman. But, as the investigation moves forward, it becomes clear that he is not the suspect. Instead, he is drawn into the case to serve as a liaison between the Army and the FBI so that they can solve the case before the serial killer strikes again.

This is one of the weaker entries into the strong Jack Reacher series. There is one really cool scene at the midway point book that I will not discuss because I hate spoilers but, on the whole, Running Blind just didn't have "it". With three stars, Running Blind just has too many leaps of logic, even for this Jack Reacher fan (this is my 15th Reacher book). Besides that, I figured out who did it about 4 hours into this 13+ hour audiobook.

I think this is the second Reacher audiobook that I have listened to that was read by Johnathan McClain. McClain's take on Reacher is interesting - he sounds less physically intimidating and sounds much more quick with the smart comments - sort of like the Tom Cruise movie version of Reacher. Some of the supporting characters were voiced in an over-the-top manner. For example, one character always yelled (in meetings, in small groups, one-on-one, wherever) and one character was always super-snarky. But, others were done very well.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. You will want to hear it if you are a fan of the series but I would not recommend starting the series with this book.
This audibook can be found on Amazon.com here: Running Blind by Lee Child.

KILLING FLOOR (Jack Reacher #1) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Random House Audio

Originally published in book form in 1997.

Read by Dick Hill

Duration: 17 hours, 47 minutes

Unabridged

I've been listening to the Jack Reacher series for a couple of years now, and I have been slowly working my way through the series in a random order. That's okay, though, because Lee Child doesn't write this series in any sort of chronological order. While Killing Floor is book #1 in terms of when it was written, it comes as #8 in the current lists of Jack Reacher books and stories according to Jack Reacher's chronological perspective.

For me, this book was particularly interesting because it filled me in on a frequently-mentioned event in Jack Reacher's life - the death of his brother Joe.

Jack Reacher decides to get off of a bus in Margrave, Georgia on a whim and ends up under arrest for a brutal murder in this town's small warehouse district out by the highway where Reacher got off the bus. 

Soon enough, Reacher proves it couldn't have been him and follows a pattern followed in almost all of his books - the man who is on the road and wandering in reveling in the fact that he has no attachments finds himself becoming attached to people and a cause. In this case, Reacher finds that this idyllic small town is not nearly as perfect as it looks and there is something very sinister going on...

The first Reacher book is a solid start to a spectacularly popular series. Dick Hill reads this book and does a great job with it. He seems to "get" Jack Reacher and is a frequent reader of his books.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Killing Floor by Lee Child.

See all of my reviews of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books here: https://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/search/label/Jack%20Reacher

THREE JACK REACHER NOVELLAS: DEEP DOWN, SECOND SON, HIGH HEAT and JACK REACHER'S RULES (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Random House Audio in 2014
Read by Dick Hill
Duration: 7 hours, 9 minutes
Unabridged

The collection in Three Jack Reacher Novellas are all prequels to the current Reacher timeline. Two are set in Reacher's childhood and one is set during his service as an officer in the Military Police.

1) Deep Down is set during the 1980s. Reacher is asked to investigate a potential leak of military secrets to the Soviet Union via fax machine from the U.S. Capitol building. The potential leakers are a set of officers working in a committee to flash out the characteristics needed in a new sniper rifle should the Congress decide to fund the creation of a new sniper rifle and buy it. Reacher is added to the committee as part of an undercover operation to figure out who the bad guy is.

This is the strongest story in the collection. 5 stars.

Lee Child

2) In Second Son, Lee Child takes us all the way back to 1974. Jack Reacher is 13 years old and his father has just been transferred to Okinawa as a part of the U.S. Marines along with his mother and his slightly older brother Joe. 

Moving to a new place is always hard and Okinawa is no exception. Reacher must prove himself to the neighborhood bully, he meets a girl and he solves two mysteries. 

The story is fun, but 13 year old Reacher is way too smart for a middle school kid, even if he is Jack Reacher. But, the mysteries were fun. In fact, the whole story was fun, kind of like looking at old yearbook photos of someone you know from way back before you ever met them. 4 stars.

*********SPOILER ALERT************

3) In High Heat, 16-year-old Reacher is off to New York City in 1977 - all by himself. This is the most implausible of the three stories. Reacher gets involved in a blackout, breaks up a criminal ring, solves the Son of Sam murders and fools around with a college girl - All in one night!

Yeah, right! 2 stars.

**********END SPOILERS************

4) The Bonus track is Jack Reacher's Rules. I have seen this book in print and opted not to read it because it is a list of advice and comments lifted from various Reacher books and novellas. In context of the stories they came from, these lines and thoughts are interesting but they are really hard to listen to on their own. I listened for about 10 minutes and gave up on this part - I couldn't stand to listen to more than an hour more of it. 1 star.


I am a big fan of the reader, Dick Hill. I think he is an exceptionally good fit for this series. I don't even bother to physically read the books now - not if Dick Hill is reading them to me.

So, in the end this is 4 different stories of varying quality. The average score of this collection is 3 stars out of 5. 

This collection can be found on Amazon.com here: THREE JACK REACHER NOVELLAS: DEEP DOWN, SECOND SON, HIGH HEAT and JACK REACHER'S RULES.

PERSONAL (Jack Reacher #19) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Random House Audio in 2014
Read by Dick Hill
Duration: 12 hours, 55 minutes
Unabridged

In Personal Jack Reacher gets brought back into military duty, but not officially this time. An extremely talented sniper has taken a shot at the President of France. The shot was taken from an extreme distance and was only stopped by a revolutionary bullet proof glass screen. The various intelligence agencies are sure that this was just a dry run for the G8 economic conference that is coming up soon in England in which several world leaders will be present.

There are four snipers capable of such a shot and 16 years ago Reacher put one of them in jail for murder when he was in the military police. A former boss of Reacher thinks that he has some sort of insight and he partners up with a young CIA / State Department operative and they are off to France. She is the brains, and he is the brawn, at least that's the way it is supposed to be.

But, once they start digging, Reacher starts to suspect that there is much more to this case than he has been told...

This was a middle-of-the-road story. The narration by Dick Hill was excellent, but the book had long bits of repetitive talking that just got tiresome, especially with Bennett, the British Intelligence agent. On top of that, the big bad guy made it feel like it was a video game like Double Dragon - the hero works his way up to the giant boss character. But, the plot twist in the end was just too much. This book should have been edited down to make it much better.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Personal by Lee Child.

DIE TRYING (Jack Reacher #2) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Penguin Audio
Originally published in 1998.
Read by Jonathan McClain
Duration: 14 hours, 47 minutes
Unabridged

In Die Trying Jack Reacher helps out a lady in need with her dry cleaning and ends up being kidnapped, thrown in the back of a van with her and driven across the country as part of an over-the-top plan.

Reacher tries to figure out a way to escape while simultaneously trying to figure out why the kidnappers them in the first place. Of course, once he starts to figure out things, he discovers that their near hopeless situation is actually worse than he thought...

This is a great Reacher novel. I am listening to them all out of order, which isn't much of a problem since Lee Child isn't really writing them in any particular order. Lots of action, plenty of plot lines and Reacher himself make this entry worth reading.

This is the first Reacher novel I have listened to that was read by Jonathan McClain. Most of them I have heard were read by Dick Hill. McClain's style grew on me as I listened and I enjoyed it. His voicing of the creepy bad buy was especially good.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. 

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Die Trying by Lee Child.