Die Trying

The Enemy

The Hard Way

Persuader

Tripwire

Without Fail

  
Bad Luck and Trouble
by Lee Child
(Delacorte, $26, GV) ISBN 978-0-385-34055-7
*****
The motto of Jack Reacher’s Army unit was “you do not mess with the special investigators.” In classic “they never listen” style, the bad guys in Bad Luck and Trouble do a lot of messing. What are the chances that Reacher is going to let them get away with it? Jack Reacher checks his bank balance at an ATM. There is more money than he expected in the account. He recognizes the extra amount as a Military Police code requesting urgent assistance. Frances Neagley, a member of Reacher’s old unit, has made the deposit. He calls her office and learns she’s in Los Angeles.
“Where is she staying in LA?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“So how am I supposed to find her?”

“She said you’d be able to track her down.”

Reacher asked, “What is this, some kind of test?” “She said if you can’t find her, she doesn’t want you.”

Of course, Reacher being the consummate action hero finds her the first place he looks. Neagley (also a character in Without Fail, an earlier book in the series) informs him that another member of the unit has been killed – he was thrown out of an airplane. Neagley wants Reacher to put the old unit back together to investigate the death.

As Reacher goes about trying to contact the other members, he learns that three others are missing. This cannot be coincidence.

The many fans of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series will find this eleventh installment a welcome addition. There’s a slight twist on the usual formula – Reacher is working with old buddies not as the usual lone wolf saving some stranger – but the action comes fast, the good guys are loyal and self-sacrificing, the villains are satisfactorily corrupt. All those elements that make for a good thriller are in place.

This may not be the best introduction to the character and the series for readers who are not familiar with the Jack Reacher books, but it doesn’t take familiarity with the previous ten books to get into the fast-moving plot. It’s likely to hook new readers and send them looking for earlier titles.

I’ve gotten used to anxiously awaiting a new Jack Reacher novel every spring and it will be a long wait for the next one!

--Lesley Dunlap

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