Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Jack Reacher

Second Son:

Rate this book
Brought to you by Penguin.

A Jack Reacher short story published as an individual audiobook, now also available in the complete Jack Reacher short story collection, No Middle Name.

Ever wondered what early experiences shaped Reacher's explosive career as butt-kicker supreme, the one-man guided-missile battler for justice? Lee Child looks back on an incident in his hero Jack Reacher's teenage years as the younger son of a tough career US Marine, on a faraway military base in the Pacific.

Although the Jack Reacher novels can be listened to in any order, Second Son follows on from Worth Dying For.

'The coolest continuing series character now on offer' Stephen King

(c) 2011 Lee Child (P)2011 Random House Audiobooks

Audible Audio

Published August 15, 2011

2 people are currently reading
14 people want to read

About the author

Lee Child

443 books34.4k followers
Lee Child was born October 29th, 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British TV's "golden age." During his tenure his company made Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of 40 as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars' worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series.

Killing Floor was an immediate success and launched the series which has grown in sales and impact with every new installment. The first Jack Reacher movie, based on the novel One Shot and starring Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike, was released in December 2012.

Lee has three homes—an apartment in Manhattan, a country house in the south of France, and whatever airplane cabin he happens to be in while traveling between the two. In the US he drives a supercharged Jaguar, which was built in Jaguar's Browns Lane plant, thirty yards from the hospital in which he was born.

Lee spends his spare time reading, listening to music, and watching the Yankees, Aston Villa, or Marseilles soccer. He is married with a grown-up daughter. He is tall and slim, despite an appalling diet and a refusal to exercise.

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
1 (20%)
4 stars
2 (40%)
3 stars
1 (20%)
2 stars
1 (20%)
1 star
0 (0%)
Displaying 1 of 1 review
Profile Image for Alexander Theofanidis.
2,266 reviews132 followers
November 4, 2025
The 13-year-old Reacher arrives in Okinawa following his father's transfer, and everything goes awry. His maternal grandfather is gravely ill, Reacher and his brother must sit entrance exams, a thug of a son of another officer plays the bully (only to be effortlessly reduced to a pile of oatmeal by the young Reacher), his brother is accused of stealing the answers to the entrance exams, and his father is blamed for misplacing a very important book containing crucial codes.

Lee Child undergoes an Enid Blyton transformation
Displaying 1 of 1 review

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.