No Plan B [Jack Reacher #27], by Lee Child and Andrew Child

At this point, no one knows how much Lee Child is actually contributing to the writing anymore. Which isn’t a bad thing – because it means the writing style is consistent. If anything, it reminds me of the earlier Reacher novels. Again – not a bad thing.

So, for long standing fans like me, it’s actually good news. The Old Reacher is back. And that means lot of twists. Because one of the factors that made this series successful – apart from Reacher himself – was the way Child managed to take simple things, simple turn of events, that looked pretty ordinary on the outside, and put them together in a way that put everything into a different light. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

This is what happens in No Plan B. From the start, the novel have you guessing what the big grand scheme behind everything might be, but the truth is unveiled in layers. Tiny layers.

And every unwrapping sheds another light on a small detail that now seems to make more sense. And as Reacher will tell you:

The net of intrigues Child weaves is dense, and in retrospect, most of it makes sense. And it all started out so small – when Reacher watched a random guy pushing a woman in front of a bus. But then mir dead bodies turn up, and people are hellbent to keep Reacher from a small town. Why? And why is the release of a single innocent prisoner that much of a drama? What’s the problem of that guy who likes to burn people and buildings?

Reacher dishes out his personal brand of justice, which is another factor that makes this series so successful. Because deep down, we all want a Reacher to turn up in our life and solve our problems for us. That would have been handy at times.

Almost all lose threads are fixed in the end, except for one. I can’t fight the feeling that there was some rush near the end of the story, like something was lost in the cutting room. That diminishes the book, but only a little – I love the classic Reacher style, the twists, the way the story enfolds. This is Reacher at it’s best.