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Jack Reacher Cases #1

A Hard Man to Forget

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Book One in THE JACK REACHER CASES.A USA TODAY BESTSELLING SERIESSet in the Reacher universe by permission of Lee Child.Former FBI agent Lauren Pauling met Jack Reacher in THE HARD WAY, the 10th Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child.Now, in A HARD MAN TO FORGET, Pauling is a private investigator in New York and receives a mysterious letter with Jack Reacher’s name, along with a phone number. Pauling calls the number and reaches a woman whose husband has gone missing. Even stranger, the woman claims she didn’t contact Pauling, and has no idea who Jack Reacher is.Intrigued, begins to investigate and when the woman becomes the target of the same men who may have abducted her husband, Pauling recruits Michael Tallon, a former special ops soldier.Pauling and Tallon quickly realize they’re dealing with much more than a missing persons case, and soon they’re in a deadly race to stop a terrifying act of mass murder.“Fast-paced, engaging, original.” –New York Times bestselling author Thomas Perry“Engrossing!” –USA Today bestselling author Rick Murcer “Furiously paced. Great action.” –New York Times bestselling author Ben Lieberman"Swept me along for the ride.” –Edgar-nominated author Craig McDonald

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 10, 2017

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About the author

Dan Ames

214 books489 followers
Dan Ames is an international bestselling author and winner of the Independent Book Award for Crime Fiction. He is the author of The JACK REACHER Cases. You can learn more about him at authordanames.com

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5 stars
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759 (36%)
3 stars
492 (23%)
2 stars
140 (6%)
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50 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
Profile Image for Mark.
1,669 reviews238 followers
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September 17, 2018
A character from the jack Reacher books as written by Lee Child, that was somewhat disappointing and I never could make myself finish this story. There were better books to read.
Profile Image for Teresa Collins.
1,118 reviews19 followers
December 14, 2017
I love the Jack Reacher series, so with his name on the book I couldn't pass it up. I really enjoyed it, but I felt like it could have been more fully developed. I love both characters in the book, but I would have like to have had more action scenes with Tallon. I think he has a lot of potential that was left undeveloped. Also, the first part of the book had me so confused. It jumped from one group of people to another without explaining who was who and what was going on. I realize that was intentional in order to create suspense, but I would have liked a little more clarity. However, all of that being said, I will definitely be looking for the next book because I overall enjoyed this one.
3,977 reviews14 followers
July 14, 2017
"It was a sunny day in New York ..."
A note pushed under her door with no information, only a telephone number and the name Reacher, propels private investigator, once FBI agent, Pauling into a fast paced, cleverly conceived thriller set mostly in Albuquerque. Told in the third person but mainly from the point of view of Pauling herself, including her fond memories of Jack Reacher, the scenes also cut to other protagonistts, namely the FBI and a mysterious bald man and his unpleasant employees. The sentences are clipped and propel the story crisply forward into frequent violent action.
A quick and easy book to read which will be enjoyed by fans of brisk thriller stories.
Profile Image for Kevin.
1,648 reviews101 followers
April 17, 2024
We all have the acquaintance who likes to name drop…”Oh yeah, then I bumped into Matty Healy from the 1975…he is so cool. He and I are like best friends…he definitely will be hanging out with me and wants to have me help him compose another album…and then that acquaintance continually comments… what would Matt do in this situation? That’s how I will live my life.”

I see this book… thinking…Lee Child approved more books involving Jack Reacher?! Sign me up!

This book is the mother of all name droppers.

This book doesn’t even have Jack Reacher in it… falls more in the “what would Jack Reacher do” vein.

29 times Jack Reacher is mentioned.

And although the action was ok, I came to the party expecting to meet Jack Reacher not just wonder what he’s doing.

Whomp, whomp,
Profile Image for Toby.
2,052 reviews72 followers
July 8, 2019
I can’t do it. I can’t force myself to read this.

Here is an excerpt, demonstrating an inability to show instead of tell...

“The men with the guns paid no attention to the desert or its distant inhabitants. They were solely focused on the man with the shovel. They continued to keep their distance. A shovel full of sand flung at them was always a possibility. So they stood well back. Close enough to be able to shoot and kill their target with complete confidence, yet far enough to cause a spade full of sand to dissipate over the distance it had to travel.”

What did I just read?!

Also, short sentences don’t automatically create a terse narrative. Here’s another excerpt that shows me just how awful a narrative can be if you’re relying too heavily on short sentences, and not enough on actual skill, to create a specific feeling — of tenseness, paranoia, etc.

“He has just enough time, so he began pulling the rings from the man’s fingers.

He wasn’t sure why, exactly.

A part of him recognized the rings were old, and that the man’s fingers had grown fat around them. They were the man’s armor. Something about the way they had looked made Tallon feel like the man got some kind of special confidence from them. And had felt that way for a long time.

So they didn’t come off easily.”

In the hands of a skilled author, I’d care about a character who broke and mutilated a bad dude’s fingers to get his rings off. In this author’s narrative, I just... don’t care. Cannot find it in me to care. I get no sense of urgency or rage from the way that scene was written. No emotion. Just anguish because it hurts my brain to have to slog through it and try to make myself feel SOMETHING, because clearly I SHOULD care, right?

Blah. Not my cup of tea. Slapping this book and the subsequent series with a huge old DNF.
8 reviews1 follower
October 8, 2017
Great read

Great book, I’ve yet to read a book from Dan Ames that wasn’t awesome. Knew his take on a Jack Reacher spinoff would be great too. Agent Pauling was a great character and nice to be able to read some more about her. Ready for book number two now!

Keep them coming Mr. Ames......way to go!!!!!
Profile Image for Deb.
212 reviews
December 14, 2017
I have to say, I was totally hoodwinked by the title of this book. I expected the character Jack Reacher to be a part of the story. His name was mentioned several times, but he never made an appearance.
Never the less, this was a quick read, pretty suspenseful. A good book to read on a rainy weekend.
Profile Image for Susannah Carleton.
Author 7 books31 followers
September 9, 2018
So-so story with two interesting main characters (one of whom appeared in Lee Child’s The Hard Way), but no character development. There are several groups of poorly introduced characters, and the setting jumps around with little to nothing to let the reader know that it has changed.

The plot, while interesting, was not well developed, and there was little resolution to the story, the except death of the main villains and some of their thugs.
Profile Image for Mike Lisanke.
1,510 reviews35 followers
December 10, 2024
OK, solid story... but the only connection to Jack Reacher is the prime character who had been an FBI agent and is now a PI. They mentioned Reacher's name through the book and he never showed up in the plot except in the mind of the prime character. Too me, that was more than a bit lame.
Profile Image for Steve.
905 reviews17 followers
June 3, 2021
I have read all of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child, so I decided to try this one, and was not disappointed at all.
Dan Ames has a writing style that brings his characters to life.
This work is about the Lauren Pauling character from "The Hard Way" Jack Reacher novel and is not directly related to the Reacher novel series.
This novel is fast-paced and well-plotted. It is a great start to a series I am sure I will read more of.
Profile Image for Gurpreet K. Cheema.
260 reviews1 follower
July 19, 2017
Wonderful story

Wonderful story about a retired FBI agent who is very attracted to Jack Reacher and she received a letter containing the name Reacher on front and inside a phone on card like a 3 by 5 inches
Profile Image for Klaas Mansier.
70 reviews1 follower
December 14, 2017
This was some seriously bad writing. More holes in it than swiss cheese. Sometimes people think that putting a raving lunatic in will make a better book, it does not, it makes it even more laughable.

I put in a second star because I finished this. Not a lot of pages, so that was doable.
Profile Image for Merlin Libby.
3 reviews
November 17, 2018
Ignorant

What a lame idea, using Jack Reacher as a hook when the story is very amateurish. I would not recommend any Dan Ames book if this is typical.
34 reviews
February 26, 2022
Not for Reacher fans - choppy, confusing, brutal, and stupid

The book has nothing to do with Jack Reacher, except she once knew him, and his name is on an envelope that is never explained. Reacher books are written in a clear, comfortable narrative, but this is broken up among three narratives with choppy 2-4 page chapters. My pet peeve. Maybe some folks like that.
Then you must disable your intelligence to bear it. These are probably nit-picking: Starting with my pet peeve - the mythical, impossible nose strike that drives cartilage through bone, into the brain. This has never happened in the real world, and I see it is the mark of an ignorant, lazy writer, after all the years. Stu-pid.
Gunshots in the doorway of the house, and cops show up coincidentally five minutes later. They don't notice the gunsmoke or exploded plaster, and didn’t get a call from the neighbors? Stu-pid.
The Reacher-like guy, Tallon, we know only by name. No description or background, like most of the characters. He seems capable, and after he kills (nose strike) and injures a pair who had tried to abduct the wife, he fails even check the car that he knew they used or get the plate, when they are investigating that company. Stupid.
Then the plot is based on bizarre brutal sadistic torture “experiments” aimed at a nuclear war to reduce population, saving only those he vaccinated against radiation? Completely impossible to vaccinate against cell damage,, and most people won't die of radiation anyway in a nuke war. Stupid squared.
A truck of “Nuclear material “?? "Enough to wipe out most of California?" We don't know they are weapons or what. Stupid.
The villain "Is a Doctor of medicine and a Doctor of philosophy?? One is not a doctor of philosophy. You have one. Stupid.
He says you can hear a predator drone, even over the prop from a nearby prop plane. I don’t think so.
536 reviews2 followers
April 29, 2020
As a fan of Lee Child’s books that feature the character Jack Reacher, I was drawn to this book since it is billed as a series titled the Jack Reacher cases. Not surprisingly, Jack Reacher does not make an appearance in the story, although his name is used liberally in the story. The main character is a former FBI agent, Lauren Pauling, who is now a private investigator and she had been featured in a previously issued Lee Child Jack Reacher story. So, Jack’s name still resonates with her and his name is used to draw her into accepting this current case. The current case is rather complex and, in the end, difficult to understand how all the pieces could have come together to accomplish the crime that connects the entire story. Part of the mystery is what crime has occurred that will explain the reason that a husband has gone missing. The detail for how and why the under lying crime was committed doesn’t come until near the end of the story. While Ms. Pauling starts out investigating the missing husband, that aspect is a small part of the bigger crime. The characters, Ms. Pauling & and a private contractor named Michael Tallon that she hires to assist her are interesting, but could be better developed. Perhaps in future stories in this series they will be. This mystery reads like a short story that was reworked into a short novel, presumably for marketing reasons. It has potential as a series and I will continue the series. I just hope the characters become more fully developed and the crimes become more fully explained and comprehensible as to how the crime was able to be committed. Sorry, but if I say more than that about the comprehension to how the crime was committed, I’m afraid would give away too much information and spoil the story for future readers.
Profile Image for Rosemary.
3,878 reviews71 followers
September 19, 2018
A Hard Man to Forget - a review by Rosemary Kenny

Based on Lee Childs' 10th Jack Reacher story, The Hard Way, Dan Ames brings his own considerable talent to bear on the character from that book, ex-FBI agent, now PI in New York, Lauren Pauling.
Intrigued to receive a letter that mentions Reacher, Pauling rings the number written inside.
A nervous woman answers, says she's never heard of Pauling or Reacher and that her only concern at the moment is that her husband has gone missing. Taking her friend Michael Tallon with her to look into the case, results in the woman going missing too! Seemingly a rogue FBI agent has gone to the dark side and plans to detonate a nuclear bomb - unless Pauling and Talon can stop him!
A brilliant starter novel to follow in Lee Childs' footsteps, A Hard Man to Forget ticks all the Reacher fans' boxes and will definitely be a five-star winner for your mystery-thriller bookshelves!
670 reviews5 followers
October 20, 2023
Lauren Pauling used to be an FBI agent and now runs her own private detective agency. Very well too.
So when receiving an envelope bearing simply the name Jack Reacher, she finds it intriguing.
So, how come Cassidy, the woman whose phone number appears inside the envelope, denies having send it?
Or even knowing Jack Reacher? Whose husband is missing?
Who shows every evidence of being deadly afraid she is about to get abducted?
Pauling has lots of questions but little in the way of answers.
As it happens, she is not the only one with lots of questions.
A Hard Man To Forget is somewhat a duplicitous title as there is a lot more going on than the reader could have guessed. And surprisingly or not, bullets are soon flying everywhere.
Enjoy.
45 reviews
July 15, 2017
A Hard Man To Forget is An Easy Book To Remember!

Dan Ames does it and he does it oh so right! I have to admit I was a bit skeptical when I saw this book. I mean come on Jack Reacher in name only ( at least, in this first Ames' work)? What could this be? But, hey, Lee Child has never led me astray, and neither does Dan Ames! This is just one heckuva a great, exciting, fast-paced thriller. It does have a familiar flow, but that ain't a compliant, it's a compliment. I can't hardly wait for Dan to do it again!!! Buy it, read it, and you see what I mean.
Profile Image for FLJimmy.
153 reviews
December 14, 2017
Short, entertaining, no Reacher and it's another fluff book where talented, beautiful people have more money than they need, access to things most will never have, and charm.
There’s no charge for my services. You called in a drone strike?
How many days will I live before I use or hear either phrase in my life?
Gee, I could just read more about Stone Barrignton if all I want is this back of a magazine recipe for successful fiction.
Did I mention it’s short enough to finish during a half afternoon which makes it ideal for entertainment?
1,477 reviews25 followers
May 31, 2018
The Jack Reacher Cases. Dan Ames

Private investigator Pauling has worked with Jack Reacher in the past. He left an extremely positive impression with her. She receives a mysterious letter with only Reachers name on it and a phone number. Intrigued and hopefully getting to meet with Reacher again, she calls the number. What ensues is a missing persons investigation and then a homicide. Pauling is being played by a FBI agent gone rogue. A non stop thriller loaded with action. Enjoyed tremendously.
27 reviews
June 25, 2022
The only reason I picked up this set of the first three Dan Ames books set in the Jack Reacher universe was the mention of Jack Reacher. I wasn't expecting much and so they weren't too much of a let down. Lazy writing, plot and characters.

In sixty years of reading books I have never heard of a "department in charge of accidental deaths" especially one that had "twenty detectives working overtime on a backlog of cases".

As I say, lazy writing, no tension, no character development etc. Waste of time.
53 reviews1 follower
December 14, 2017
I like the main characters Lauren Paulding & Michael Tallon but the story was too choppy. You didn't have a clue what was going on until the last few chapters. I say leave Jack Reacher out of it & develop the relationship between Paulding & Tallon, develop the story from the beginning. I really like Jack Reacher but the Michael Tallon character could be very good if it was developed. I won't read another of the Jack Reacher File books. He doesn't play a role in the book at all.
453 reviews
December 14, 2017
I thought I'd try this author because of the reference to Jack Reacher. I've enjoyed every Reacher novel and while I knew this wasn't a Reacher book, I hoped it would be close. It wasn't. The only way Reacher came up in this book was through a note left under a private detective's door that said it was from Reacher. The plot itself was not believable though most true Reacher novels aren't believable either. It just wasn't as well written. I tried.
4 reviews
December 25, 2017
This was a very enjoyable read, with a plot that kept me guessing, although not as much as an actual Jack Reacher book. I'm not sure if I will continue the series. While it was necessary to establish Pauling's previous relationship with Reacher in order to introduce the character,. I felt that it was already being overdone by the end of this book. Not sure If I am willing to go through it again.
241 reviews
March 11, 2018
Crazy Choices

After working with Jack Reacher, Pauling remained curious about the man. When an envelope arrives with just his name, like a cat she can't ignore that curiousity. At the phone number in the message, a young woman is nervous and secretive. The only choice is to go meet her. As things heat up, she calls in her friend Tallon and they begin to get the picture. A mad man has stollen nuclear material and must be stopped. Exciting and deadly as any Reacher story.
Profile Image for D A Lightcap.
92 reviews2 followers
May 18, 2018
Strange letter,dead man, and his wife in danger but why?

Mystery letter from maybe Jack Teacher so what is going on? Former FBI agent and one love of Jack received a letter and the mystery starts. Every turn leads to more questions. Why kill the husband and then go after the wife? Every answer is a dead end or goes no where except the FBI wants her to quit investigating with no clear answer she investigates the wife. Read to discover the truth.
1,573 reviews7 followers
July 6, 2018
This book is a fantastic fast paced thriller that won’t let you put it down, it’s excellent. The plot is amazing, the characters all written about so well you can see them, hear them think, see their actions as they escape bullets, fight, run for their lives and uncover the plot. A good clean read, it’s also supremely entertaining with a very satisfying ending. I can thoroughly recommend reading this book to all who like a blood pumping puzzle.
Profile Image for Holly Lenz.
928 reviews2 followers
July 12, 2020
A Hard Man to Forget is a Jack Reacher spin off story in which investigator Lauren Pauling gets involved in a dangerous investigation after the disappearance of a truck driver. The story is an action packed adventure, but it’s not one to think too deeply about.

The narrator of the audiobook is well suited to the genre and does a good job bringing the book to life.

I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook. This is my honest and voluntary review.
Profile Image for Alabama Anthony.
707 reviews4 followers
August 6, 2024
A different type of “Jack Reacher” book but sort of what I expected. Now I wonder if Jack will have a cameo in a future story.

A New York private investigator who had a brief encounter with Reacher in the past arrives at her office to find a curious note slipped under her door. How did this tie in with Reacher? And what or who did the phone number belong to?

A good read filled with some very factual information, some of which I worked with in the past.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews

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