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Jack Reacher #20
Make Me
“Why is this town called Mother’s Rest?” That’s all Reacher wants to know. But no one will tell him. It’s a tiny place hidden in a thousand square miles of wheat fields, with a railroad stop, and sullen and watchful people, and a worried woman named Michelle Chang, who mistakes him for someone else: her missing partner in a private investigation she thinks must have started small and then turned lethal.
Reacher has no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, and there’s something about Chang . . . so he teams up with her and starts to ask around. He thinks: How bad can this thing be? But before long he’s plunged into a desperate race through LA, Chicago, Phoenix, and San Francisco, and through the hidden parts of the internet, up against thugs and assassins every step of the way—right back to where he started, in Mother’s Rest, where he must confront the worst nightmare he could imagine.
Walking away would have been easier. But as always, Reacher’s rule is: If you want me to stop, you’re going to have to make me.
14 pages, Audiobook
First published September 8, 2015
10718 people are currently reading
21657 people want to read
About the author
Lee Child
442 books34.5k followersLee 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,315 reviews
September 5, 2015
Holy crap. I am running away with Jack Reacher. I don't care if I never get to wash my clothes or eat regular meals.
September 6, 2015
Number 20 in the Jack Reacher series and one of the best out of all of them! This Jack is slightly different from the usual and I wonder if Lee Child is planning on letting him have a relationship and stay in one place a while in the next book. I very much enjoyed his interactions with Chang and laughed aloud several times at his humour. I also liked his intelligence. Sure he still takes on three thugs at a time and wins but he also plans and strategises and works things out. I thought this book was an excellent read, practically unputdownable and action packed. Loved it:)
July 30, 2022
Pity poor Jack Reacher. It's like the guy can never get even ten minutes to himself to relax and enjoy life before he stumbles into some grave crisis that only someone as talented as Jack Reacher could ever hope to sort out and set right.
In this case, Reacher is riding in a train through the vast heartland of America, on his way to Chicago. He wants to get to the city before it gets too cold to enjoy it. Out in the middle of nowhere, though, the train stops in a little town called Mother's Rest. Reacher is a curious kind of guy and he wants to know how the town got its name. So he gets off the train, expecting to spend a day or two unraveling the mystery, before continuing on to the Windy City.
As he gets off the train, he's approached by a woman who's obviously expecting to meet someone from the train and who, in the dark, initially mistakes Reacher for her party. She backs off when she realizes her mistake, but Reacher assures her that no other man of his size was even riding on the train, let alone getting off of it. The woman's name is Michelle Chang, and Reacher walks her back to her motel where he takes a room for himself.
But creepy things are afoot in the tiny town and some seriously bad guys are watching Chang's every move. When Reacher accompanies her back to the motel, they automatically assume that Chang was meeting him and that the two are working together. The next day, as Reacher is walking through the town, looking for a monument or something that would explain how the town got its name, the bad guys have a spy dogging Reacher's every step and become convinced that he is assisting Chang in investigating the town's dark secret.
Chang has no clue what that secret might be. She's simply there to meet a fellow investigator who asked for her assistance without explaining the case he was on. Now he's disappeared and Reacher agrees to help Chang look for him. Before long the two are up to their necks in trouble, with the Bad Guys hot on their trail. The search takes them to Chicago, to Arizona and to California and the more they pursue the case, the murkier and the more dangerous it becomes.
Inevitably, there is a lot of action and some great fight scenes. A lesser man would have never made it out of Mother's Rest to begin with, but as every fan of this series understands, Jack Reacher is not a lesser man. It's fun watching Reacher and Chang dig into this ever-expanding conspiracy, and by the time they finally return to Mother's Rest, you know that all hell is about to break loose.
I would argue that the book drags a bit in the second half and it maybe takes a bit too long for the reader to realize the full nature--and the horror--of the problem that Reacher and Chang confront here. But it's a pretty gruesome one, and when push comes to shove, we can all be thankful that Jack Reacher is on the job. This is another very good entry in this popular series.
In this case, Reacher is riding in a train through the vast heartland of America, on his way to Chicago. He wants to get to the city before it gets too cold to enjoy it. Out in the middle of nowhere, though, the train stops in a little town called Mother's Rest. Reacher is a curious kind of guy and he wants to know how the town got its name. So he gets off the train, expecting to spend a day or two unraveling the mystery, before continuing on to the Windy City.
As he gets off the train, he's approached by a woman who's obviously expecting to meet someone from the train and who, in the dark, initially mistakes Reacher for her party. She backs off when she realizes her mistake, but Reacher assures her that no other man of his size was even riding on the train, let alone getting off of it. The woman's name is Michelle Chang, and Reacher walks her back to her motel where he takes a room for himself.
But creepy things are afoot in the tiny town and some seriously bad guys are watching Chang's every move. When Reacher accompanies her back to the motel, they automatically assume that Chang was meeting him and that the two are working together. The next day, as Reacher is walking through the town, looking for a monument or something that would explain how the town got its name, the bad guys have a spy dogging Reacher's every step and become convinced that he is assisting Chang in investigating the town's dark secret.
Chang has no clue what that secret might be. She's simply there to meet a fellow investigator who asked for her assistance without explaining the case he was on. Now he's disappeared and Reacher agrees to help Chang look for him. Before long the two are up to their necks in trouble, with the Bad Guys hot on their trail. The search takes them to Chicago, to Arizona and to California and the more they pursue the case, the murkier and the more dangerous it becomes.
Inevitably, there is a lot of action and some great fight scenes. A lesser man would have never made it out of Mother's Rest to begin with, but as every fan of this series understands, Jack Reacher is not a lesser man. It's fun watching Reacher and Chang dig into this ever-expanding conspiracy, and by the time they finally return to Mother's Rest, you know that all hell is about to break loose.
I would argue that the book drags a bit in the second half and it maybe takes a bit too long for the reader to realize the full nature--and the horror--of the problem that Reacher and Chang confront here. But it's a pretty gruesome one, and when push comes to shove, we can all be thankful that Jack Reacher is on the job. This is another very good entry in this popular series.
July 17, 2015
Yes! Now this is a Jack Reacher book. Everything the last book wasn't. It starts with Reacher getting off a train in the small town of Mother's Rest. He's curious about the name and thinks he might spend a day or so there, checking out any local museum, getting the story from the locals, etc. But this simple decision has him stepping into one of the darkest mysteries in this entire series, one that doesn't become entirely clear until 30 or so pages from the end. The book is filled with the minutiae of tracking down some very bad people from only the tiniest of known facts. Some might think it farfetched that Reacher would become involved with something this complex and complicated on such a bare minimum of interest, but this is classic Reacher and the book is a strong one. You might need to steel yourself for those closing chapters, but this is a Reacher to remember and one of the strongest recent books in this series.
July 30, 2016
Perhaps I have grown past Lee Child in this genre but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that once I loved Jack Reacher as described by Lee Child. I loved that he was a vagabond, someone who disliked the military for what it had done to him, someone who hated guns and didn't look for trouble but it always seemed to find him anyway. Now all I see is Tom Cruise, runt. The direction of Child's books seem to be leaning toward a character that would fit Cruise rather than Reacher's persona and I find that very boring. Sadly this will be my last Lee Child book and I didn't even bother to finish it. I will miss him but we have grown apart.
December 12, 2015
I do love Jack Reacher. Make Me is the 20th in Lee Child's Jack Reacher series and a good one. This time he is paired with Michelle Chang, ex-FBI and now a private investigator. I really enjoy reading about Reacher's relationship with women. The series always has strong female partners. Jack Reacher respects women for their intelligence among others attributes.
Make Me is a can't put it down book. Like the others in the series, the dialog is easy to read and the action is plentiful. I went thru the 400 plus pages in a weekend. There is a different twist to this book involving the internet and the deep and dark web. A little bit far reached, but lots of fun.
This book is exactly what it is suppose to be.
5 out of 5 stars.
Make Me is a can't put it down book. Like the others in the series, the dialog is easy to read and the action is plentiful. I went thru the 400 plus pages in a weekend. There is a different twist to this book involving the internet and the deep and dark web. A little bit far reached, but lots of fun.
This book is exactly what it is suppose to be.
5 out of 5 stars.
June 18, 2025
“Reacher has no particular place to go, all the time in the world to get there, so he steps off a train in Mother’s Rest, a small town hidden in a thousand square miles of wheat fields. It’s a strange place with watchful people, and a worried woman named Michelle Chang, who mistakes Reacher for someone else: her missing partner in a private investigation she thinks must have turned lethal."
Former FBi Special Agent, now PI, Michelle Chang, and Jack Reacher meet by chance at a train station in a small agricultural town called Mother’s Rest. Reacher is at the station because he wants to know why the town is called Mother’s Rest. Chang is at the station looking for her partner, Keever. His last known location is the small town, Mother’s Rest, and he’s disappeared. The reader learns before Reacher and Chang that Keever has been murdered. Keever had called Chang asking for back-up, saying he would fill her in when she got to Mother’s Rest. Reacher and Change team up to find her missing partner. But they are harassed with “force” and realize that Keever must have discovered a deadly secret, so deadly that he’s disappeared. The town quickly becomes “sinister and creepy.”
This book is classic Reacher. The characters and action scenes are vivid, perfect technical descriptions, the violence graphic and realistic. The story begins in slow motion, a pace so gradual, that you don’t know until it’s too late that you’re on a thrill ride. Child lets you go inside Reacher’s thoughts in such a way that you become totally engrossed. Reacher and Chang develop a strong relationship, professional and personal, with just enough romantic interludes to add soft warmth to a gritty, tough story. If you’ve read Lee Child, you know his writing style. He uses lots of words, all good, sometimes too much, (this book is 562 pages) but I have to give this five stars for a total genius story and great writing.
“Walking away would have been easier. But as always, Reacher’s rule is: If you want me to stop, you’re going to have to make me.”
Former FBi Special Agent, now PI, Michelle Chang, and Jack Reacher meet by chance at a train station in a small agricultural town called Mother’s Rest. Reacher is at the station because he wants to know why the town is called Mother’s Rest. Chang is at the station looking for her partner, Keever. His last known location is the small town, Mother’s Rest, and he’s disappeared. The reader learns before Reacher and Chang that Keever has been murdered. Keever had called Chang asking for back-up, saying he would fill her in when she got to Mother’s Rest. Reacher and Change team up to find her missing partner. But they are harassed with “force” and realize that Keever must have discovered a deadly secret, so deadly that he’s disappeared. The town quickly becomes “sinister and creepy.”
This book is classic Reacher. The characters and action scenes are vivid, perfect technical descriptions, the violence graphic and realistic. The story begins in slow motion, a pace so gradual, that you don’t know until it’s too late that you’re on a thrill ride. Child lets you go inside Reacher’s thoughts in such a way that you become totally engrossed. Reacher and Chang develop a strong relationship, professional and personal, with just enough romantic interludes to add soft warmth to a gritty, tough story. If you’ve read Lee Child, you know his writing style. He uses lots of words, all good, sometimes too much, (this book is 562 pages) but I have to give this five stars for a total genius story and great writing.
“Walking away would have been easier. But as always, Reacher’s rule is: If you want me to stop, you’re going to have to make me.”
September 15, 2015
I proudly admit, right up front, that I am a genuine, card-carrying Reacher Creature. I will follow Reacher wherever he goes. I will read all future books and see all future movies. This book did not disappoint. Right from Chapter One, Reacher is in trouble, even though he doesn't know it yet. The story and the characters are meticulously rolled out, and the full final explanation of what was really going on just blew my mind.
August 22, 2015
The 20th book in the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. Having read and enjoyed the previous 19 in the series it was inevitable that I would read this one. All the books in this series have lots of action and this was no exception. A decent story and the book kept me interested throughout but never quite hit the heights of some of the previous ones. I think these books are my guilty pleasure, they are not that well written but good fun.
July 3, 2024
Reacher is always fun to read. Such a simple process, you know what you're going to get, and you know it's not going to be hard. Landing (literally) in a strange train stop with the name of Mother's Rest, he jumps off the train to find out why a town would be called this.
I always love the ones where he meets a nice woman, this time he becomes quite enamoured with Chang, on the hunt for her partner in private investigation. Of course she's got the chops being ex FBI, and she becomes a formidable ally.
Their banter is good, the job at hand interesting as the weirdos of this strange town are definitely hiding something. Child makes his story telling simple, the continual use here when referring to 'the guy with the good hair' for example used constantly just becomes funny, the lack of names funny, increasing Reacher's distaste. Of course added to all this are the short sentences, which are snappy, biting, and addictive.
Involved with working out the disappearance and a growing number of deaths, is a science journalist whose character is as equally chatty and interesting as Cheng, the three make for entertaining reading as we try and work out what's going on in this backward town. Always fun seeing Reacher do his usual routine, keeping it simple, booking two hotel rooms and really only needing one. Love Reacher, these books are gold in every way. Easy reading, I know what to expect, and very, very witty.
Asking everyone why the town was called Mother's Rest. He was on a mission. This franchise can do nothing wrong in my eyes, another reading category that serves a purpose, never letting me down.
I listened to this via the BorrowBox platform and my public library. Jeff Harding is king.
I always love the ones where he meets a nice woman, this time he becomes quite enamoured with Chang, on the hunt for her partner in private investigation. Of course she's got the chops being ex FBI, and she becomes a formidable ally.
Their banter is good, the job at hand interesting as the weirdos of this strange town are definitely hiding something. Child makes his story telling simple, the continual use here when referring to 'the guy with the good hair' for example used constantly just becomes funny, the lack of names funny, increasing Reacher's distaste. Of course added to all this are the short sentences, which are snappy, biting, and addictive.
Involved with working out the disappearance and a growing number of deaths, is a science journalist whose character is as equally chatty and interesting as Cheng, the three make for entertaining reading as we try and work out what's going on in this backward town. Always fun seeing Reacher do his usual routine, keeping it simple, booking two hotel rooms and really only needing one. Love Reacher, these books are gold in every way. Easy reading, I know what to expect, and very, very witty.
Asking everyone why the town was called Mother's Rest. He was on a mission. This franchise can do nothing wrong in my eyes, another reading category that serves a purpose, never letting me down.
I listened to this via the BorrowBox platform and my public library. Jeff Harding is king.
September 12, 2015
Make Me is the 20th novel in Lee Child’s iconic Jack Reacher Series. Having been slightly disappointed with the last couple of books in one of my favorite series, I was looking forward to this latest addition.
I have grown to love Jack Reacher since I read the 1st book in the series….. a military cop-turned-drifter, who travels around America, the only possessions he has with him are a toothbrush and his ATM bank card….owns no house, no car….no material possessions expect as mentioned the two above…not even clothes..he buys new ones when required whilst throwing old ones in the garbage. He’s a man totally off the grid!!!! He goes anywhere he wants, when he wants and answers to no one!!! And along his travels, he meets characters and gets involved with situations that are of interest to him…..and this latest story is exactly that…….
First page…..
He’s just passing through Mother’s Rest because …well just because!!!
But within minutes, he gets involved in something that gives him a reason to stay more than just one night in this small and obscure town.
He meets Michelle Chang, a PI looking for her missing partner who disappeared in Mother’s Rest, after his last call to her.
This town has secrets that just wet Reacher’s appetite. Dodgy and secretive characters who know more about the town’s history. Teaming up with Michelle, they are soon on a dangerous mission that takes them to Oklahoma City, Los Angles and Chicago and back to Mother’s Rest to finally discover the terrible and horrifying secrets of the town.
Wow, the writer certainly kept me guessing….never did I even think that the secrets of the town were what they were.
I enjoyed this book even though there was a bit too much information on guns and other things.
All in all, a good addition to the series.
I have grown to love Jack Reacher since I read the 1st book in the series….. a military cop-turned-drifter, who travels around America, the only possessions he has with him are a toothbrush and his ATM bank card….owns no house, no car….no material possessions expect as mentioned the two above…not even clothes..he buys new ones when required whilst throwing old ones in the garbage. He’s a man totally off the grid!!!! He goes anywhere he wants, when he wants and answers to no one!!! And along his travels, he meets characters and gets involved with situations that are of interest to him…..and this latest story is exactly that…….
First page…..
Twenty miles north the train slowed, and slowed, and then eased to a hissing stop, and the doors sucked open, and Jack Reacher stepped down to a concrete ramp in front of a grain elevator as big as an apartment house
But on a sign board running its whole length was written the reason Reacher was there: Mother's Rest. Which he had seen on a map, and which he thought was a great name for a railroad stop.
Either way Reacher figured he might as well find out
He’s just passing through Mother’s Rest because …well just because!!!
But within minutes, he gets involved in something that gives him a reason to stay more than just one night in this small and obscure town.
He meets Michelle Chang, a PI looking for her missing partner who disappeared in Mother’s Rest, after his last call to her.
This town has secrets that just wet Reacher’s appetite. Dodgy and secretive characters who know more about the town’s history. Teaming up with Michelle, they are soon on a dangerous mission that takes them to Oklahoma City, Los Angles and Chicago and back to Mother’s Rest to finally discover the terrible and horrifying secrets of the town.
Wow, the writer certainly kept me guessing….never did I even think that the secrets of the town were what they were.
I enjoyed this book even though there was a bit too much information on guns and other things.
All in all, a good addition to the series.
August 14, 2025
تبدأ الأحداث عندما يصل بطل قصتنا جاك ريتشر بالصدفة إلى بلدة صغيرة في الغرب الأمريكي، يلتقي هناك بمحققة خاصة تدعى ميشيل تشانغ تبحث عن زميلها المفقود، سرعان ما يكتشف ريتش أن البلدة تخفي أسرارًا خطيرة، ويبدأ في التحقيق مع تشانغ، مما يقودهما إلى شبكة من الجرائم المروعة. القصة مليئة بالتحولات غير المتوقعة- ما تسمى بالبلوت تويست- حيث يتأرجح العمل بين الحركة السريعة والألغاز المعقدة.
الكاتب لي تشايلد يتقن شد القارئ وجذبه من مشهد إلى آخر عبر فصول قصيرة مشحونة بالتوتر، مع انفجارات من العنف المحسوب
جاك ريتشر، شخصية كاريزمية تجمع بين القوة البدنية والذكاء التحليلي، تصرفاته العفوية وروحه الحرة تجعل القارئ ينجذب إليه بسهولة.
يعيب العمل النهاية والتي شابها التسرع
الكاتب لي تشايلد يتقن شد القارئ وجذبه من مشهد إلى آخر عبر فصول قصيرة مشحونة بالتوتر، مع انفجارات من العنف المحسوب
جاك ريتشر، شخصية كاريزمية تجمع بين القوة البدنية والذكاء التحليلي، تصرفاته العفوية وروحه الحرة تجعل القارئ ينجذب إليه بسهولة.
يعيب العمل النهاية والتي شابها التسرع
December 5, 2020
Book 20 in the Jack Reacher series published 2015.
A 4 star entertainment.
Jack Reacher and the dark web is not something that you would normally put together in the same sentence but that is exactly what we have here.
Half of the book is all about the Jack we have come to know and love. The other half is not a side of Jack that comes to mind all that readily, a touchy feely Jack!
Almost from the minute that Jack steps off the train in the remote township of Mothers Rest, things get interesting. A woman steps out of the shadows and is about to approach Jack but at the last minute moves back into the shadows. Unperturbed Jack does what Jack normally does; he waits and lets what will happen, happen.
And of course when it happens life will never be the same again in Mothers Rest.
The lady in question is Michelle Chang, an ex FBI agent now a private investigator, and the reason she is in Mothers Rest is because a partner of hers asked for her assistance but since she arrived in Mothers Rest there has been no sign of him and she fears for his safety. After hearing her story Jack, who can’t help himself, decides to get involved and help the little lady get to the bottom of this mystery.
This mystery will have Jack and Michelle hopping all over the country and getting involved in something that Jack knows nothing about, the dark web.
In this episode of Jack’s life the pace gets turned down a bit along with some of the violence and the romance goes up a notch. Whilst the violence meter is down a bit lower than normal for Jack the end of the book has more than its fair share of shock value.
I enjoyed reading about the warm fuzzy side of Jacks nature this time around but was still relieved that there was still enough of the ‘go on, Make Me’ Jack there to dish out some divine retribution.
A 4 star entertainment.
Jack Reacher and the dark web is not something that you would normally put together in the same sentence but that is exactly what we have here.
Half of the book is all about the Jack we have come to know and love. The other half is not a side of Jack that comes to mind all that readily, a touchy feely Jack!
Almost from the minute that Jack steps off the train in the remote township of Mothers Rest, things get interesting. A woman steps out of the shadows and is about to approach Jack but at the last minute moves back into the shadows. Unperturbed Jack does what Jack normally does; he waits and lets what will happen, happen.
And of course when it happens life will never be the same again in Mothers Rest.
The lady in question is Michelle Chang, an ex FBI agent now a private investigator, and the reason she is in Mothers Rest is because a partner of hers asked for her assistance but since she arrived in Mothers Rest there has been no sign of him and she fears for his safety. After hearing her story Jack, who can’t help himself, decides to get involved and help the little lady get to the bottom of this mystery.
This mystery will have Jack and Michelle hopping all over the country and getting involved in something that Jack knows nothing about, the dark web.
In this episode of Jack’s life the pace gets turned down a bit along with some of the violence and the romance goes up a notch. Whilst the violence meter is down a bit lower than normal for Jack the end of the book has more than its fair share of shock value.
I enjoyed reading about the warm fuzzy side of Jacks nature this time around but was still relieved that there was still enough of the ‘go on, Make Me’ Jack there to dish out some divine retribution.
October 31, 2015
Child is a guilty pleasure for me. How to account for my spouting pacificism and bemoaning our violent human nature and at the same time being enthralled with Reacher’s vigilante spirit and no qualms about killing people he finds deserve killing? The formula takes a man who drifts around the country in “off-the-grid” mode, lets you get drawn with him into helping someone in trouble, in the process slowly uncovering a major criminal conspiracy from the smallest of clues, and then after some dangerous interludes finally ending with a massive showdown involving him going up against them almost single-handedly.
Here, in the process of checking out the history behind why a tiny town in Oklahoma is called Mother’s Rest, he encounters a female private detective checking out the disappearance there of her colleague. The problem is that she doesn’t know any details of his case and is not privy to the reader’s knowledge of his being buried under a pigsty at a nearby farm. Their only clue is a scrap of paper in his motel room with an L.A. journalist’s phone number and the phrase “200 deaths.” All the ordinary shopkeepers, workers, and the police in the town are not very friendly or forthcoming to their questions, and the journalist in L.A. racks his brain about whether there was a crank call from the town about one of his stories. Could it have been the one on GMO agriculture, an expose on human trafficking, or a story on the Dark Web? As they work through the red herrings at various locales in the country, Reacher finds his usual nirvana in good cups of coffee and a rare romantic entanglement with his no-nonsense partner, an inscrutable Chinese-American who previously served as an analyst with the FBI. The bad guys tips their hand by putting danger in their way. As usual Reacher relishes the chance to beat up oafs too stupid to come after him in groups of less than ten.
Usually I like the formula just fine, appreciating the variations on the theme, savoring the cumulative revelations on Reacher’s past as clues into his paradoxical character. Always we wonder why does someone with such empathy for ordinary people and apparent emotional health end up never seeking the bonds of a family and community or achievement of meaningful work? I didn’t learn much more about Reacher’s elusive soul this time, and I was disappointed that the bad guys had no personalities and were so baroque in the extent of their evil enterprise. The running mystery of the origin of the town’s name was underwhelming. Still, the narrative and snappy dialog kept me turning the pages with pleasure and anticipation.
Here, in the process of checking out the history behind why a tiny town in Oklahoma is called Mother’s Rest, he encounters a female private detective checking out the disappearance there of her colleague. The problem is that she doesn’t know any details of his case and is not privy to the reader’s knowledge of his being buried under a pigsty at a nearby farm. Their only clue is a scrap of paper in his motel room with an L.A. journalist’s phone number and the phrase “200 deaths.” All the ordinary shopkeepers, workers, and the police in the town are not very friendly or forthcoming to their questions, and the journalist in L.A. racks his brain about whether there was a crank call from the town about one of his stories. Could it have been the one on GMO agriculture, an expose on human trafficking, or a story on the Dark Web? As they work through the red herrings at various locales in the country, Reacher finds his usual nirvana in good cups of coffee and a rare romantic entanglement with his no-nonsense partner, an inscrutable Chinese-American who previously served as an analyst with the FBI. The bad guys tips their hand by putting danger in their way. As usual Reacher relishes the chance to beat up oafs too stupid to come after him in groups of less than ten.
Usually I like the formula just fine, appreciating the variations on the theme, savoring the cumulative revelations on Reacher’s past as clues into his paradoxical character. Always we wonder why does someone with such empathy for ordinary people and apparent emotional health end up never seeking the bonds of a family and community or achievement of meaningful work? I didn’t learn much more about Reacher’s elusive soul this time, and I was disappointed that the bad guys had no personalities and were so baroque in the extent of their evil enterprise. The running mystery of the origin of the town’s name was underwhelming. Still, the narrative and snappy dialog kept me turning the pages with pleasure and anticipation.
September 12, 2015
When Lee Child first introduced Jack Reacher, I, along with so many, enjoyed each novel and anxiously waited for the next one to arrive. Reacher was a character that stood for what was right and no matter in what situation he found himself, he triumphed. His handling of each situation was believable and the novels were fun to read. The last few have become formulaic and somewhat unbelievable. Child, like Louis L’Amour, has written one story over and over. In Make Me, I knew what was going to happen before I cracked open the book and in that regard was not let down. But unlike, L’Amour, Child treats readers as if we have an IQ of 60. For that reason alone, this will be my last Reacher novel. But as if that was not enough, I have a few more.
Reacher was career military and, while intelligent, we are to believe that he would say this in describing how another character was shaking hands: “Deferential, but not obsequious.” The irony of this statement is that “obsequious” was removed from college SAT exams as one of the obscure words they wanted to drop. It is hard to imagine anyone using this phrase and Reacher’s use jarred me out of the story.. Maybe Child stuck it in as a tribute to columnist Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune who defended its use in the SATs.
In describing the characters in the town of Mother’s Rest, Child takes a full paragraph to tell us how old one of them is, without telling us how old he is. This paragraph reads like a nonsense riddle and the next sentence states, “He got straight to the point.” This could have been meant as humor but just seemed stupid.
Throughout the book Child uses repetition as a device to illuminate the story. This worked some of the time but got old after the first three. How many times do we need to know that the town has “a store that did Western Union and Money-Gram and faxing and photocopying and FedEx and UPS and DHL. I guess if you need word count this device works as well as any.
The biggest flaw is one that Child even points out. When the man who has been told to get rid of Reacher and Chang confronts them, he doesn’t kill them right off. Instead, we have an improbable encounter in a foyer where, naturally, Reacher disarms the guy. If this wasn’t bad enough, Child later describes how “in tall tales told by firelight” there is a conversation between the good guy and bad guy but this is the real world. Then Reacher simply shoots the bad guy, no words exchanged. We are left to believe Reacher is the only smart one. This idiocy is repeated when three more bad guys are sent to take Reacher and Chang out. Instead of killing everybody, there is a discussion of who to kill which, again, gives Reacher the chance to kill them. In reading this scene, I had to laugh as six foot five Reacher shoots over the heads of everyone else to kill the three bad guys. I don’t think Tom Cruise will be making this into a movie.
This one gets one star and will be my last Lee Child novel. As for the next Reacher movie, I may go see it, after all, I do enjoy a good comedy.
Reacher was career military and, while intelligent, we are to believe that he would say this in describing how another character was shaking hands: “Deferential, but not obsequious.” The irony of this statement is that “obsequious” was removed from college SAT exams as one of the obscure words they wanted to drop. It is hard to imagine anyone using this phrase and Reacher’s use jarred me out of the story.. Maybe Child stuck it in as a tribute to columnist Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune who defended its use in the SATs.
In describing the characters in the town of Mother’s Rest, Child takes a full paragraph to tell us how old one of them is, without telling us how old he is. This paragraph reads like a nonsense riddle and the next sentence states, “He got straight to the point.” This could have been meant as humor but just seemed stupid.
Throughout the book Child uses repetition as a device to illuminate the story. This worked some of the time but got old after the first three. How many times do we need to know that the town has “a store that did Western Union and Money-Gram and faxing and photocopying and FedEx and UPS and DHL. I guess if you need word count this device works as well as any.
The biggest flaw is one that Child even points out. When the man who has been told to get rid of Reacher and Chang confronts them, he doesn’t kill them right off. Instead, we have an improbable encounter in a foyer where, naturally, Reacher disarms the guy. If this wasn’t bad enough, Child later describes how “in tall tales told by firelight” there is a conversation between the good guy and bad guy but this is the real world. Then Reacher simply shoots the bad guy, no words exchanged. We are left to believe Reacher is the only smart one. This idiocy is repeated when three more bad guys are sent to take Reacher and Chang out. Instead of killing everybody, there is a discussion of who to kill which, again, gives Reacher the chance to kill them. In reading this scene, I had to laugh as six foot five Reacher shoots over the heads of everyone else to kill the three bad guys. I don’t think Tom Cruise will be making this into a movie.
This one gets one star and will be my last Lee Child novel. As for the next Reacher movie, I may go see it, after all, I do enjoy a good comedy.
October 19, 2015
I like this series. Jack Reacher was a army cop, until he left under dubious circumstances – he’s not a man to get on the wrong side of – and now he travels America with no more than a credit card, some id and a toothbrush. When he needs a change of clothes he ditches what he's currently wearing and buys new. And he's big, very big. If he sees a wrong he rights it. To the uninitiated that's about all you need to know.
In this, the twentieth book, Reacher exits the train at a small town in the middle of nowhere, called Mother’s Rest. He wonders around, drinks coffee and tries (in vain) to elicit the origin of the town’s name from everyone he meets. Then, in a case of mistaken identity, he meets a woman and we start to get a whiff of the ‘wrong’ that’ll stop Reacher getting the next train out of this godforsaken place.
One of the things I find attractive about these stories is the tempo of the prose; sentences are short and sharp, facts are often repeated and logical conclusions flow at a constant pace. At times it feels like reading a bizarre extended poem, and I like that. Picking up one of these books is like returning to a favourite holiday spot: it’s comfortable and familiar and relaxing. The trouble is, these feelings can wear off and if nothing interesting happens for a while your favourite spot can start to feel… well, a little dull.
There is a mystery here and we know enough early on to know that’s there’s something very off about this town. But it does take a long time to warm up and I was beginning to think that I'd strolled lazily to my normal place on the beach just once too often. However, rather belatedly the story did pick up and the mystery surrounding the town turned out to be disturbing and not at all what I expected - and then Reacher does his stuff, as you know he will.
It’s not the best book in the series but it’s not the worst either. There is enough here to satisfy hardened fans but it's not the book to kick off with if you're a first timer. In the final reckoning I do know I’ll be back – he’s a good man, that Reacher.
In this, the twentieth book, Reacher exits the train at a small town in the middle of nowhere, called Mother’s Rest. He wonders around, drinks coffee and tries (in vain) to elicit the origin of the town’s name from everyone he meets. Then, in a case of mistaken identity, he meets a woman and we start to get a whiff of the ‘wrong’ that’ll stop Reacher getting the next train out of this godforsaken place.
One of the things I find attractive about these stories is the tempo of the prose; sentences are short and sharp, facts are often repeated and logical conclusions flow at a constant pace. At times it feels like reading a bizarre extended poem, and I like that. Picking up one of these books is like returning to a favourite holiday spot: it’s comfortable and familiar and relaxing. The trouble is, these feelings can wear off and if nothing interesting happens for a while your favourite spot can start to feel… well, a little dull.
There is a mystery here and we know enough early on to know that’s there’s something very off about this town. But it does take a long time to warm up and I was beginning to think that I'd strolled lazily to my normal place on the beach just once too often. However, rather belatedly the story did pick up and the mystery surrounding the town turned out to be disturbing and not at all what I expected - and then Reacher does his stuff, as you know he will.
It’s not the best book in the series but it’s not the worst either. There is enough here to satisfy hardened fans but it's not the book to kick off with if you're a first timer. In the final reckoning I do know I’ll be back – he’s a good man, that Reacher.
October 28, 2015
Jack Reacher hooks up with a private investigator to locate a missing person. Actually three missing people. No. I take that back. There are four missing people. In the search, Reacher and the PI must venture into the Deep Web, the hidden part of the Internet where criminals and hackers abound. It's a very nasty place.
As for the plot, it's gripping, completely novel, and loaded with plenty of plausible twists. And I guarantee you'll never guess the ending. The writing is engaging and tight. The pacing will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Characterwise, Reacher's role in this book is multidimensional. He's a lover, and he's a fighter, but most of all he's a relentless investigator.
I'm a long time Reacher fan, and, in my opinion, this tense, high-octane story is the best in the series.
Highly recommended for fans of thrillers.
As for the plot, it's gripping, completely novel, and loaded with plenty of plausible twists. And I guarantee you'll never guess the ending. The writing is engaging and tight. The pacing will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Characterwise, Reacher's role in this book is multidimensional. He's a lover, and he's a fighter, but most of all he's a relentless investigator.
I'm a long time Reacher fan, and, in my opinion, this tense, high-octane story is the best in the series.
Highly recommended for fans of thrillers.
August 23, 2018
My first foray into the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child began with this novel. Reacher is traveling by train to Chicago when he notices something that makes him exit the train in a small town called Mother's Rest. The former FBI agent he meets there convinces him that putting his military policeman skills to work would be a worthwhile way to spend his time.
Of course I’d heard about Jack Reacher for years, and knew he was high on the list of worthwhile crime avengers, but I’d never been tempted until hearing David Remnick’s interview with Child broadcast on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. I’d never known Child had a previous successful career as a filmmaker/producer for the Masterpiece Theatre until age 40, but even this book shows us how that personal history fits in with his fiction.
As a second career, we’d have to say Child succeeded admirably. I do not have a good sense of what Jack Reacher looks like, except that he is large, and of the immovable variety of heavy. He is lousy at defensive driving, but he shoots pretty well, if a little high. He appears to have no disqualifying prejudices, and like cops everywhere, he eats (and makes love) when opportunity presents. Otherwise, he is focused on stopping bad guys.
This particular mystery has a degree of information about the Deep Web, as opposed to the Dark Web. The Dark Web is an intentionally anonymous but intentionally reachable portion of the Deep Web, while the Deep Web is often meant to obscure all it does. I first learned about the Deep Web from Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Bleeding Edge.
And so finally, I discover that I have less and less desire to hear about, read about, learn about really creepy crimes committed by creeps. I think for awhile I found it amusing and harmless entertainment, but the more writers try to make it logical and realistic, which it needs to be to hold our interest, the more I find I am unwilling to go there. Look, there may be people wandering about in the shadows, actually seeking the worst we can do to one another. I find the more common manifestations of cruelty quite bad enough.
But I give Child all kinds of kudos for managing to carry on as long as he has. Hopefully he has enjoyed it as much as his legion of fans.
Of course I’d heard about Jack Reacher for years, and knew he was high on the list of worthwhile crime avengers, but I’d never been tempted until hearing David Remnick’s interview with Child broadcast on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. I’d never known Child had a previous successful career as a filmmaker/producer for the Masterpiece Theatre until age 40, but even this book shows us how that personal history fits in with his fiction.
As a second career, we’d have to say Child succeeded admirably. I do not have a good sense of what Jack Reacher looks like, except that he is large, and of the immovable variety of heavy. He is lousy at defensive driving, but he shoots pretty well, if a little high. He appears to have no disqualifying prejudices, and like cops everywhere, he eats (and makes love) when opportunity presents. Otherwise, he is focused on stopping bad guys.
This particular mystery has a degree of information about the Deep Web, as opposed to the Dark Web. The Dark Web is an intentionally anonymous but intentionally reachable portion of the Deep Web, while the Deep Web is often meant to obscure all it does. I first learned about the Deep Web from Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Bleeding Edge.
And so finally, I discover that I have less and less desire to hear about, read about, learn about really creepy crimes committed by creeps. I think for awhile I found it amusing and harmless entertainment, but the more writers try to make it logical and realistic, which it needs to be to hold our interest, the more I find I am unwilling to go there. Look, there may be people wandering about in the shadows, actually seeking the worst we can do to one another. I find the more common manifestations of cruelty quite bad enough.
But I give Child all kinds of kudos for managing to carry on as long as he has. Hopefully he has enjoyed it as much as his legion of fans.
September 5, 2023
"It's a pact with the devil . . . apart from that, it's going to be unpleasant." -- Jack Reacher during the finale (*and also providing me with a superb opening line for a review), on page 482
Weirdly comical how I could cut-and-paste sections from my earlier review for the previous Jack Reacher novel Personal and have them exquisitely apply to the subsequent - but not really a sequel - entitled Make Me. Wandering protagonist Reacher hops off a train at a rustic village junction called 'Mother's Rest' in Oklahoma and promptly becomes involved in a missing person case spearheaded by a disgraced federal agent-turned-private eye named Michelle Chang (just call her 'Chang,' thanks). The build-up / investigatory process was first-rate - Reacher and Chang pinball to Chicago and L.A., among other locales, in pursuit of leads in this murky plot - and a sequence involving the duo facing down a thuggish trio of would-be assassins from a Russian organized crime faction invading an upper-crust Phoenix estate was an eerily wonderful mix of hyper-violent action and suspense. Also, having injuries finally slow down the normally indefatigable-seeming Reacher (after he scrimmages with a hitman) was a nice touch of unexpected realism. However, the final chapters edge into implausible but more so distasteful territory - hopping on the so-called 'torture porn' bandwagon that oddly became popular this century - and cast an unshakeable pall over the proceedings.
Weirdly comical how I could cut-and-paste sections from my earlier review for the previous Jack Reacher novel Personal and have them exquisitely apply to the subsequent - but not really a sequel - entitled Make Me. Wandering protagonist Reacher hops off a train at a rustic village junction called 'Mother's Rest' in Oklahoma and promptly becomes involved in a missing person case spearheaded by a disgraced federal agent-turned-private eye named Michelle Chang (just call her 'Chang,' thanks). The build-up / investigatory process was first-rate - Reacher and Chang pinball to Chicago and L.A., among other locales, in pursuit of leads in this murky plot - and a sequence involving the duo facing down a thuggish trio of would-be assassins from a Russian organized crime faction invading an upper-crust Phoenix estate was an eerily wonderful mix of hyper-violent action and suspense. Also, having injuries finally slow down the normally indefatigable-seeming Reacher (after he scrimmages with a hitman) was a nice touch of unexpected realism. However, the final chapters edge into implausible but more so distasteful territory - hopping on the so-called 'torture porn' bandwagon that oddly became popular this century - and cast an unshakeable pall over the proceedings.
May 24, 2024
In this 20th book in the 'Jack Reacher' series, the former military cop helps search for a missing man. Like all Reacher books, the novel works fine as a standalone.
*****
Jack Reacher, a former military cop who wanders from place to place, exits a train in an Oklahoma town called 'Mother's Rest', curious to find out the origin of the name.
At the train station, Reacher happens to meet a private detective named Michelle Chang, whose business partner - whom she was supposed to meet in Mother's Rest - has vanished.
Reacher decides to help Chang search for her partner, and the duo soon discover that the residents of Mother's Rest are EXTREMELY hostile, and obviously hiding something.
>Reacher and Chang are essentially run out of town, and they embark on an investigation to find Chang's missing partner and discover what's going on in Mother's Rest.
The search takes the twosome around the country, and they finally get some valuable assistance from a journalist in Los Angeles, whom people constantly call with conspiracy theories.
There's plenty of action in the story, since Reacher hasn't met a man (or probably woman) he couldn't beat up. I don't want to give away spoilers, but we see a dark side of human nature in the tale's climax. There's also a touch of romance, for folks who like that sort of thing.
You can follow my reviews at https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot.com
October 21, 2015
Jack Reacher decided the stop along the train line called Mother’s Rest warranted a visit – for no other reason than he was curious as to how the town attained the name. In the middle of fields and fields of wheat, it was a lonely place with no other town or habitation as far as the eye could see. Stepping from the train at midnight, he was surprised to see a young woman in front of him – but she was waiting for someone else; someone who didn’t arrive…
Michelle Chang was ex FBI turned private investigator – she was supposed to meet her partner in Mother’s Rest and her deepening suspicion was that he was missing. With Reacher’s time his own, and his natural curiosity getting the better of him, he teamed up with Chang to help find Keever. But the folk of the small town were not overly friendly; in fact their very natures raised Reacher’s antennae – there was something strange going on, he was sure of it.
As their investigation deepened, Reacher and Chang found themselves on the long road to the city. Tracking through Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and more in search of elusive answers, what they were discovering sent shock waves through them – and the dangers were very real. With their lives on the line, Reacher knew it was time to make a stand. With murder and mayhem following them every step of the way, they knew they had to find answers soon – but would they?
I thoroughly enjoyed Make Me by Lee Child – an excellent thriller which felt just like the Reacher tales of old! A fast paced plot, a tough protagonist (as always!) and a gruesome but outstanding story – all put together to create a heart stopping adventure! Highly recommended.
Michelle Chang was ex FBI turned private investigator – she was supposed to meet her partner in Mother’s Rest and her deepening suspicion was that he was missing. With Reacher’s time his own, and his natural curiosity getting the better of him, he teamed up with Chang to help find Keever. But the folk of the small town were not overly friendly; in fact their very natures raised Reacher’s antennae – there was something strange going on, he was sure of it.
As their investigation deepened, Reacher and Chang found themselves on the long road to the city. Tracking through Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and more in search of elusive answers, what they were discovering sent shock waves through them – and the dangers were very real. With their lives on the line, Reacher knew it was time to make a stand. With murder and mayhem following them every step of the way, they knew they had to find answers soon – but would they?
I thoroughly enjoyed Make Me by Lee Child – an excellent thriller which felt just like the Reacher tales of old! A fast paced plot, a tough protagonist (as always!) and a gruesome but outstanding story – all put together to create a heart stopping adventure! Highly recommended.
January 25, 2016
Here's a minor revelation: Jack Reacher can be injured and by a single adversary too. Not sure that counts as a spoiler. He alights from a train in Mother's Rest, OK mostly to find out how the town got its name. He meets a retired FBI agent, turned PI, named Michelle Chang, and takes a liking to her and her investigation into the disappearance of a business partner, Keever. Something is not right in the town, and they track down a L.A. writer and a source in Chicago, who thinks he has discovered something about the goings-on in Mother's Rest. Taut writing, with the usual implausibilities, but one of the better books of late.
December 28, 2016
The only way I can think of doing this review is by writing it in two parts. Here is the first:
What was good about the book:
Well... Reacher of course. He is his old self, although he seems a bit older, and a bit more sexual. Which wasn't bad in itself. His reacherisms made me smile (I have collected a few at the end of this review). So typically Reacher. Also, his way of lateral thinking, his observational skills and deductions were all as we have come to expect and love. His sidekick, Michelle Chang, was also a nice touch. A tough ex-FBI agent, equally smart chic, who gives as much as Reacher does.
The story itself was also well developed and multi-layered. Once you think you know what's going on, but then it turns out to be something even more horrible and twisted and sick. And because of it, I have learnt something about the internet. How scary.
And it was all there, expertly hidden in plain sight, in the writing. The trick was in the details. And this is what Lee Child does best. Every word is important, or might be important. You can't afford to miss paragraphs in order to skip ahead, because you'll miss something vital. And because I'm an impatient reader, I had to backtrack many times to re-read sentences, even paragraphs, as I missed something without which the pages further on did not make sense.
Now for the things I had a problem with:
Everyone seemed to speak the same as Reacher. Even the narrative was like this, and that really annoyed me. Not only Reacher had a particular way of using clipped, short, to the point sentences, all the bad guys did as well, even the most dumbass thugs. Which is highly improbable. And really annoying. It made them sound equally as smart as Reacher is, like they are in the same league as him. And clearly they are not.
The other thing that bothered me was that Reacher is becoming such a softy. Maybe this was done because all the female fans have been demanding more action between the sheets, but surely we don't need to go there. We love Reacher as the independent guy, who gets the girl, then they both move on upon mutual agreement. I didn't like him going all mushy for the chic, his sidekick, and analysing their constant lovemaking on a scale in his head - even though he gave better marks the more times they did it. I felt as though he was starting to fall for her. And this was even highlighted by the ending. Reacher going off into the sunset with a chic??? Really? Noooooo. What will become of him? Should we now expect him to announce an engagement in the next book? OMG! Surely not!
Also, as we expect Reacher to be a tough guy, who always wins, who is always better in hand-to-hand combat than his counterparts, now we get to see him weakened. And it's not a good sight. It really bothered me. With all his knowledge and brainpower, and calculations in his head, he still gets injured - which hinders him throughout the book. See... this is what I meant about becoming mushy and soft. WTF? I want my tough-ass Reacher back. The one with the hard head, and the hard hits. The one who takes on thirty guys with ease, not back out of a fight.
I don't understand the direction Child is taking with Reacher's character. What? He is getting older? Starting to have thinner hair? Who gets seriously injured? Aaaand gets all gooey-eyed over a girl? If I wanted someone like this, I would read a romance novel with middle aged people. Gross...
So, there you have it. In conclusion? I couldn't wait to get my hands on the new Reacher book, I couldn't wait for his smarts and brain and brawling and bulldozing as he takes on a myriad of bad guys all on his own, because he feels so strongly about right and wrong. Instead, I got a good plot, which was well developed, but I got a middle aged, sexed up, injured softy and a book where every sentence (the dialogues, the good guys, the bad guys, even the narrative) was written in the same style. I felt like I was reading an analytical observation report, which until only Reacher was doing it in the previous books was fun, but now became really bothersome and annoying.
So a mixed review. I can't decide if I liked it. I liked it because I was waiting for it so much, but I didn't like it due to the above mentioned new developments. It's a shame. I hope the direction Child seems to be taking with Reacher is only temporary, because if this is going to continue, it is highly probable that he will lose one big fan... It feels like I'm loosing my best friend. I want my Reacher back!
Reacherisms:
"The only fights you truly win are the ones you don't have."
"Hope for the best, plan for the worst."
"Admit nothing, even on your deathbed. You might suddenly get better."
"Reacher was built for bulldozing, not for gymnastics."
What was good about the book:
Well... Reacher of course. He is his old self, although he seems a bit older, and a bit more sexual. Which wasn't bad in itself. His reacherisms made me smile (I have collected a few at the end of this review). So typically Reacher. Also, his way of lateral thinking, his observational skills and deductions were all as we have come to expect and love. His sidekick, Michelle Chang, was also a nice touch. A tough ex-FBI agent, equally smart chic, who gives as much as Reacher does.
The story itself was also well developed and multi-layered. Once you think you know what's going on, but then it turns out to be something even more horrible and twisted and sick. And because of it, I have learnt something about the internet. How scary.
And it was all there, expertly hidden in plain sight, in the writing. The trick was in the details. And this is what Lee Child does best. Every word is important, or might be important. You can't afford to miss paragraphs in order to skip ahead, because you'll miss something vital. And because I'm an impatient reader, I had to backtrack many times to re-read sentences, even paragraphs, as I missed something without which the pages further on did not make sense.
Now for the things I had a problem with:
Everyone seemed to speak the same as Reacher. Even the narrative was like this, and that really annoyed me. Not only Reacher had a particular way of using clipped, short, to the point sentences, all the bad guys did as well, even the most dumbass thugs. Which is highly improbable. And really annoying. It made them sound equally as smart as Reacher is, like they are in the same league as him. And clearly they are not.
The other thing that bothered me was that Reacher is becoming such a softy. Maybe this was done because all the female fans have been demanding more action between the sheets, but surely we don't need to go there. We love Reacher as the independent guy, who gets the girl, then they both move on upon mutual agreement. I didn't like him going all mushy for the chic, his sidekick, and analysing their constant lovemaking on a scale in his head - even though he gave better marks the more times they did it. I felt as though he was starting to fall for her. And this was even highlighted by the ending. Reacher going off into the sunset with a chic??? Really? Noooooo. What will become of him? Should we now expect him to announce an engagement in the next book? OMG! Surely not!
Also, as we expect Reacher to be a tough guy, who always wins, who is always better in hand-to-hand combat than his counterparts, now we get to see him weakened. And it's not a good sight. It really bothered me. With all his knowledge and brainpower, and calculations in his head, he still gets injured - which hinders him throughout the book. See... this is what I meant about becoming mushy and soft. WTF? I want my tough-ass Reacher back. The one with the hard head, and the hard hits. The one who takes on thirty guys with ease, not back out of a fight.
I don't understand the direction Child is taking with Reacher's character. What? He is getting older? Starting to have thinner hair? Who gets seriously injured? Aaaand gets all gooey-eyed over a girl? If I wanted someone like this, I would read a romance novel with middle aged people. Gross...
So, there you have it. In conclusion? I couldn't wait to get my hands on the new Reacher book, I couldn't wait for his smarts and brain and brawling and bulldozing as he takes on a myriad of bad guys all on his own, because he feels so strongly about right and wrong. Instead, I got a good plot, which was well developed, but I got a middle aged, sexed up, injured softy and a book where every sentence (the dialogues, the good guys, the bad guys, even the narrative) was written in the same style. I felt like I was reading an analytical observation report, which until only Reacher was doing it in the previous books was fun, but now became really bothersome and annoying.
So a mixed review. I can't decide if I liked it. I liked it because I was waiting for it so much, but I didn't like it due to the above mentioned new developments. It's a shame. I hope the direction Child seems to be taking with Reacher is only temporary, because if this is going to continue, it is highly probable that he will lose one big fan... It feels like I'm loosing my best friend. I want my Reacher back!
Reacherisms:
"The only fights you truly win are the ones you don't have."
"Hope for the best, plan for the worst."
"Admit nothing, even on your deathbed. You might suddenly get better."
"Reacher was built for bulldozing, not for gymnastics."
January 3, 2016
Where do I begin? As an avid Jack Reacher fan, I have been anxiously watching one of my favorite authors veer off course now for several years. Beginning somewhere around book fifteen in the series, it appeared to me that Lee Child had not just run out of ideas but that he was probably getting bored. Perhaps, success does this to a man. This book has all the traditional elements of a classic Reacher story but the writing is tired and uninspired as if the author were trying to make a dead-line and didn't have time to think it through. There was no suspense, barely a mystery, and for the first time ever I questioned why so many people had to die. Child didn't bring the reader along the way he used to do in his earlier works where you couldn't wait for Reacher to give it to the bad guys. Then there's the whole story-line itself...a town so far out in no where that they don't even have a cell-phone tower, luring desperate people through chat rooms to gruesome ends. I'm pretty sure there was a movie like this called Hostel, but what really made my eyes roll was the climactic battle at the end, Reacher with a concussion, an ex-FBI agent who had never discharged her weapon in the line of duty, and an LA Times science editor armed with sub-machine guns versus farmers armed with M-16's that I found unacceptably ludicrous. I don't know about you but the next time someone hands me a Reacher book to read I am going to say "Make Me."
May 26, 2021
New York Best Seller List - Sep. 27, 2015 - #1
The insurmountable & unstoppable Jack Reacher, the “x-military” officer & drifter has a new project in his life.
Can Jack Reacher & Michelle Chang travel & find this small town called “Mother’s Rest”? In their travels they find many “Mother’s Rest” towns just outside the large cities mentioned in the book’s description.
One with an ancient railroad, death history, yearly suicides, ancient wagon trail, ancient Indian tribe, one “Mother’s Rest” town built by her son for his dead mom, most with small strange “Mother’s Rest” stores? Majority townspeople answer all “Mother’s Rest” town simple questions made to them - “I don’t know?”
A good book showing & piecing their travels & finding crimes in each “Mother’s Rest” town in their investigations.
Make Me - Stephen King & Lee Child talk - 45 minutes
“Stephen King--a huge fan of the series, now 20 long.”
The insurmountable & unstoppable Jack Reacher, the “x-military” officer & drifter has a new project in his life.
Can Jack Reacher & Michelle Chang travel & find this small town called “Mother’s Rest”? In their travels they find many “Mother’s Rest” towns just outside the large cities mentioned in the book’s description.
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One with an ancient railroad, death history, yearly suicides, ancient wagon trail, ancient Indian tribe, one “Mother’s Rest” town built by her son for his dead mom, most with small strange “Mother’s Rest” stores? Majority townspeople answer all “Mother’s Rest” town simple questions made to them - “I don’t know?”
A good book showing & piecing their travels & finding crimes in each “Mother’s Rest” town in their investigations.
Make Me - Stephen King & Lee Child talk - 45 minutes
“Stephen King--a huge fan of the series, now 20 long.”
June 28, 2016
Not the best Reacher ... a truly horrible premise and too much of what seemed to me to be irrelevant material. Still, it had its moments.
March 4, 2024
Book twenty in the Jack Reacher series, and I'm still enjoying these as much as when I first discovered book one.
I love Jack, and therefore, I'm incredibly biased towards this series. Yes, I know every book follows the same formula, and yes, they become somewhat predictable, but I don't care. The writing, the characters, and the plotlines are as familiar as comfy trainers, and sometimes, that's what we need in a book.
Content warning in this one for the Dark Web and suicide along with Jack's usual violence.
Five stars.
I love Jack, and therefore, I'm incredibly biased towards this series. Yes, I know every book follows the same formula, and yes, they become somewhat predictable, but I don't care. The writing, the characters, and the plotlines are as familiar as comfy trainers, and sometimes, that's what we need in a book.
Content warning in this one for the Dark Web and suicide along with Jack's usual violence.
Five stars.
July 25, 2015
I know it's fashionable to make fun of trigger warnings these days, but I think there are cases where they make sense, for example, their (original?) purpose of warning people suffering from eating disorders away from descriptions that could trigger relapses of their behavior, symptoms of the most fatal mental illnesses. In the same spirit, I think part of this book benefits from a content warning, but since it comes up about 80% in, I will put it under a spoiler tag for you to read if mental illness is of interest or concern.
The ending of this book also takes an extraordinarily dark turn (even more so than my spoiler). Reacher's antagonists usually seem to be motivated by greed or power, but these villains have found a complicatedly evil way to make a lot of money. The book ends so abruptly that you don't feel like you get an answer to "Wait, how did that come about?" or "How did they get away with it for so long?" etc. When one of the villains tries to justify his scheme, in the last few pages, it is so lame you can't believe that he even believes it.
There are some dubious details about computers and the Internet. Also an implication towards the end that Reacher expects to spend more time in the future with the female protagonist of this book, which rarely happens (he's a drifter, after all). I'm not sure I understood why he is interested in this woman in particular, other than the fact that we're on volume 20, so why not change things up a bit.
For all that, I'll give this the same rating as the rest of 'em, since the first 80% or so is as good as the others, and some readers will find the dark tone and open-ended romance fresh.
Review copy received from Edelweiss.
The ending of this book also takes an extraordinarily dark turn (even more so than my spoiler). Reacher's antagonists usually seem to be motivated by greed or power, but these villains have found a complicatedly evil way to make a lot of money. The book ends so abruptly that you don't feel like you get an answer to "Wait, how did that come about?" or "How did they get away with it for so long?" etc. When one of the villains tries to justify his scheme, in the last few pages, it is so lame you can't believe that he even believes it.
There are some dubious details about computers and the Internet. Also an implication towards the end that Reacher expects to spend more time in the future with the female protagonist of this book, which rarely happens (he's a drifter, after all). I'm not sure I understood why he is interested in this woman in particular, other than the fact that we're on volume 20, so why not change things up a bit.
For all that, I'll give this the same rating as the rest of 'em, since the first 80% or so is as good as the others, and some readers will find the dark tone and open-ended romance fresh.
Review copy received from Edelweiss.
November 1, 2015
3.5*
I have a slight suspicion that this book was written by someone other than Lee Child. Or part of it anyway.
For once, it wasn't mostly written in the staccato sentences usually used in the Reacher novels. Which I hate btw. There were parts that actually had some long, incoherent and rambling sentences, to the point that my eyes started glazing over and I fast-forwarded to the next paragraph. Child also uses repetition quite often. Maybe he needed some fillers to reach the required minimum amount of pages.
Another difference was that Reacher substituted his old clothes for new ones only once in the whole book! Usually we get treated to the numerous times he has to buy new clothes, how many days he had worn them without changing *mental note: ewww*, and how he stashes the old clothing in a trashcan nearby. His black coffee was not the focus of his mornings anymore.
It was an enjoyable read though, action packed, and at times it even had me chuckling.
Definitely a book for Reacher fans.
I have a slight suspicion that this book was written by someone other than Lee Child. Or part of it anyway.
For once, it wasn't mostly written in the staccato sentences usually used in the Reacher novels. Which I hate btw. There were parts that actually had some long, incoherent and rambling sentences, to the point that my eyes started glazing over and I fast-forwarded to the next paragraph. Child also uses repetition quite often. Maybe he needed some fillers to reach the required minimum amount of pages.
Another difference was that Reacher substituted his old clothes for new ones only once in the whole book! Usually we get treated to the numerous times he has to buy new clothes, how many days he had worn them without changing *mental note: ewww*, and how he stashes the old clothing in a trashcan nearby. His black coffee was not the focus of his mornings anymore.
It was an enjoyable read though, action packed, and at times it even had me chuckling.
Definitely a book for Reacher fans.
April 1, 2025
Книга номер 20 за Джак Ричър.
Добре написана, изпипан сюжет, малко напрежение за сол и нашият супергерой продължава към залеза.
Но този път с готината мадама, на която безкористно помага. Според мен, това си е напредък. :)
Добре написана, изпипан сюжет, малко напрежение за сол и нашият супергерой продължава към залеза.
Но този път с готината мадама, на която безкористно помага. Според мен, това си е напредък. :)
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