No Middle Name

Starred review from April 17, 2017
Bestseller Child’s captivating collection includes 12 stories, some of novella length, which cover a lot of Jack Reacher’s life, before, during, and after his military career. In “Too Much Time,” the one tale not previously published, Reacher witnesses a robbery and deftly halts the thief in small-town Maine. The authorities want a statement, but soon Reacher’s charged with “felonious involvement”—a classic Child mash-up of deduction and action. In “Second Son,” set in 1974 in Guam, where the Reacher family has just been posted, 13-year-old Jack already knows how to deal with bullies and demonstrates his nascent investigative gifts. In “High Heat,” set on the night of the 1977 New York City blackout, teenage Reacher has a date, helps the FBI make a case against a mob boss/drug lord, and provides clues to the identity of serial killer Son of Sam. Though Child (Night School) is at his best in the longer entries, this volume demonstrates what his fans already know: he’s a born storyteller and an astute observer. Agent: Darley Anderson, Darley Anderson Literary.

April 15, 2017
A bushel of previously uncollected Jack Reacher stories brings the vagabond hero from childhood to hunkhood.Child's (Night School, 2016, etc.) hero, an ex-Army investigator whose travels always put him in the path of someone who needs his help, has shown a durability to match his popularity. The formula barely changes from novel to novel, but there's a pop-culture canniness to it that's irresistible. The fun of Reacher is his mix of Holmes-ian deductive genius, wisecracking insolence, and tough-guy muscle. He can find a cop on the take by witnessing the police response to a staged mugging or reduce a Mafia henchman to a bruised and bloody pile. The stories in this collection feel, at times, almost like fan fiction--especially the one in which a teenage Reacher finds himself wandering through New York City on the night of the 1977 blackout and, before dawn, helps a cop nail a drug kingpin, canoodles with a Sarah Lawrence coed, and delivers the tip that helps catch Son of Sam. But still, there's a kick in seeing the character so fully formed from such a young age in this story and the one in which he's an Army brat dealing with bullies at a new posting. And the short form is refreshing after the misfire of Child's last novel, in which the violence became unpleasant and the tone curdled. No such problem here. And it's encouraging that the novella Too Much Time, which leads into the next Reacher novel, feels like a return to form. These are tasty appetizers that will hopefully lead to a satisfying entree.

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May 1, 2017
These 12 wildly entertaining short stories confirm what we know about Jack Reacher. He's a former military policeman, and he roams the world by bus, armed with a folding toothbrush, a passport, and an ATM card. He doesn't look like Tom Cruise: he's a slab of a man, with hands like catchers' mitts. He might pulverize you for mentioning it, but he can talk intellectually, as when he discourses on Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. Readers can take Reacher stories as top-line actioners and love the parody-pastiches going on simultaneously, as when he spins Hemingway, who obliquely invented the hard-boiled style: The darkness didn't help. It didn't help at all. Especially delicious are the tributes to that English detective in a deerstalker, as when Reacher identifies the killer as the fellow wearing oversize boots. There's action here, as well as deadpan comedy and a wish-fulfilling hero. Wouldn't you like to hop on a bus leaving town just because you can? Reacher's legion of fans will relish these short takes on their hero's life as they await the next novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)