George Kelly: WEDNESDAY’S SHORT STORIES #272: NO MIDDLE NAME: THE COMPLETE COLLECTED JACK REACHER STORIES By Lee Child

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Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories by Lee Child

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Lesa's Book Critiques: Kevin’s Corner Annex – Eleven Numbers by Lee Child

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Short Story Wednesday Review: Eleven Numbers: A Short Story by Lee Child

Eleven Numbers: A Short Story by Lee Child is something far different than one would expect from the author of the legendary Jack Reacher series. Instead, this quick read is all about math and mathematician Nathan Tyler. But, as the publisher synopsis makes clear, spy stuff is also at work here.

 

Despite the advice from the airline, the State Department, and his boss, Nathan Tyler is headed to Russia for a mathematics conference.  Tyler is sure that the Russians value and respect math. He is sure that the conference will an island of calm in a sea of chaos and noise. Besides, he is a man on a mission and operating on a need-to-know basis and other folks do not need to know everything that is in his head.

 

Of course, things go sideways. The questions are twofold. How did they go sideways? Is he going to get home, alive and in one piece?

A pleasant change of pace, Eleven Numbers: A Short Story by Lee Child is a fast moving and fun read. Even if you hated math in school and can’t balance a checkbook to save yourself, like me, you will learn a thing or two about numbers. Especially, eleven very important ones.

 

Recommended.

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3Q78zIZ

 

My reading copy came by way of a digital ARC, made available by the publisher, Amazon Original Stories, through NetGalley, after the publication date earlier this month. Good thing to for this reader as the Dallas Public Library System does not carry it.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2025

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Review: The Sentinel: A Novel by Lee and Andrew Child

It has been several books since I read a Jack Reacher novel. For me, they had become entirely too predictable. Reacher drifts into town, finds a more than friendly local cop or waitress, cleans out the problem caused by entrenched locals, and moves out and on down the road. Names and places changed, but the basic premise did not. Just like twelve or more books later, the private detective still goes to the abandoned warehouse at 2 am without a weapon or self-awareness, Reacher had become far too predictable for me.

 

It also did not help that my reading speed and concentration has dipped markedly for the last three years. Not only have I not been able to resume my own writing, I simply don’t read as fast as I was used to and have a far harder time tracking a story from start to finish. Reading well enough to review is an increasingly rare phenomenon. I blame it on the grief though it just as easily could be related to a couple of my disabilities or some new medical freight train headed my way.

 

All that being said, thanks to Scott’s help, I was able to get my hands on the new novel in eBook form via my local library. I figured I would know soon enough if it was worth taking a look at. Within a few pages, it was clear that The Sentinel: A Novel by Lee Child and his brother, Andrew Child, (aka Andrew Grant) was a different Reacher novel.

 

It was also very good.

 

One week after Rusty Rutherford was fired from his job, Jack Reacher shows up in the small town roughly seventy-five miles northeast of Nashville, Tennessee. Rusty used to run the IT Department for the town. For all intents and purposes, he was the IT Department. Things have gone disastrously wrong. The town is now under a ransomware attack with critical services no longer working. The local citizenry now hates his guts.

 

Reacher knows none of this and wants nothing more than a cup of coffee and heads for the nearest coffee place he sees. As it happens, it is the morning haunt of Mr. Rusty Rutherford. Not only did he get a hostile reception in the place, Mr. Rutherford seems to be oblivious to the fact as he moves down the sidewalk that he is headed into an even more hostile reception. Rutherford being surrounded by several people in a carefully orchestrated plan. They are closing in on him. Clearly an abduction is planned as a car has moved into position at the mouth of the nearby alley. They have a good plan and their target is oblivious. It would have worked too if Reacher hadn’t decided to intervene.

 

He does and that sets off an intense seven days for Rutherford, Reacher, and numerous folks in this tale of espionage, the cold war, modern day computer technology, and a lot more. While Reacher is still Reacher, the tale is complicated and reads very differently from earlier books in the series. It also finds the spark that made the first books in the series so very good.

 

If you have not been around the series for a while, take a look at The Sentinel: A Novel by Lee and Andrew Child. I suspect you will be pleasantly surprised as it is well worth your time.

 

  

The Sentinel: A Novel

Lee Child

Andrew Child

https://www.jackreacher.com/us/home-us/

Delacorte Press (Penguin Random House)

http://www.randomhousebooks.com/books/635231/

October 2020

ASIN# B084FLW5KM

eBook (also available in audio and print formats)

368 Pages

  

 

Review copy provided by the Dallas Public Library System.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2020

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FFB Review: "One Shot" by Lee Child-- Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Barry is back today for FFB hosted by Patti Abbott with his thoughts on One Shot by Lee Child…..

ONE SHOT (2005) by Lee Child

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

In an unnamed city in Indiana, at rush hour on a Friday afternoon, a sniper enters a parking garage over a plaza, takes aim, and kills five people in a matter of seconds. The shooter leaves behind all kinds of evidence which leads to a hugely successful investigation and which in turn almost overwhelmingly points to former Army sniper James Barr, who is arrested without a struggle. When

interrogated, he refuses to answer any questions, saying only “They got the wrong guy” and “Get Jack Reacher for me.”

The problem for both the prosecution and the defense is that Jack Reacher is, for all intents and purposes, a ghost. Completely off the grid, he might as well be Jack Unreachable. A former military policeman and now a drifter who rarely stays anywhere for more than a few days, who travels with nothing but the clothes he wears for those few days before discarding them and replacing them with new ones, Reacher is in Miami when he happens to see a national TV news broadcast about the Indiana slayings. He knew James Barr from an investigation fourteen years earlier, when he made the man a promise. Because of that promise, he plans to travel to Indiana—a long journey because he’s light on money and bus routes are the least expensive ways to get where he has to go.

 After being transferred to the county jail, Barr inadvertently violates prisoner protocol and is severely beaten by a gang of other inmates. He’s comatose in a hospital by the time Reacher arrives in the city and meets some of the principal players, among them the D.A., the defense attorney, Barr’s sister, and the police detective who worked the case. Reacher doesn’t want to hang around indefinitely, and nobody knows when Barr will come out of the coma, if he does at all, or what kind of mental condition he’ll be in if he does. Reacher figures his trip has been a waste of time and plans on leaving.

But that night he goes to dinner at a local sports bar where a young woman comes on to him. His rejection of her advances leads to a confrontation with five young hoods, which in turn makes him realize it was a set-up of some kind, and that— as the reader has already begun to learn— there is someone behind the scenes, a “puppet-master,” who is manipulating people and events. He soon learns, too, that he’s being followed. He decides to stay on and work with the defense attorney as her “evidence analyst,” and after he’s framed for a murder, must pursue his own investigation while avoiding the police and the puppet-master’s minions.

 Lee Child’s clear, clipped writing style moves the story along at a decent pace, for the most part, but I nevertheless feel it’s padded with too many repetitive descriptions of routes Reacher walks or drives (when he borrows someone’s car), and what’s along them. How many times do I need irrelevant details about a cloverleaf or a highway built on concrete stilts or the black glass office tower that

houses the local NBC affiliate or a rutted country road? I found myself doing something I seldom do: skimming these and other such repetitious passages that did nothing to move the story forward. This was not for me the kind of ticking-clock page-turner the author intended.

This is only the second Reacher novel I’ve read, the first being 61 Hours four years ago. It’s a good thing I didn’t start with One Shot because it may very well have discouraged me from reading other books in the series. It’s a series whose hardcore fans are legion, so what I’m about to say could get me pilloried. (Just yell, don’t hit.)

As a hero—at least as he’s portrayed in One Shot—Jack Reacher is tedium personified. He’s nearly infallible, always invincible, and frequently arrogant. I know that technically there aren’t any degrees of perfection, that something is or isn’t perfect. Even so, as a fictional hero, Reacher is too perfect. I find that irritating and, frankly, somewhat boring, because he really isn’t relatable the way other fictional heroes are. His character is a modern variation on the western hero who rode into town, took care of the bad guys the townsfolk couldn’t, and rode out again. But even John Wayne, Randolph Scott, William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and others had their moments of failure, weakness, and vulnerability. You know: humanity. Not Reacher. Not in One Shot, anyway.

Immediately upon finishing the novel, I watched the movie produced by and starring that triumph of miscasting, Tom Cruise. Although he doesn’t remotely resemble Child’s character, he played the part well enough. The script takes some liberties with the original storyline, but correctly covers the basics. Like the book, I thought the movie was only so-so.

© 2015 Barry Ergang

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of it is available at Amazon and at Smashwords. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/.

Via PW-- Lee Child On Why He Signed with Authors United

As we have learned the hard way with my son's store that Amazon closed a month ago over three customers who filed multiple complaints over allegedly defective products they still have not returned, having all your eggs in the Amazon basket is a very bad idea long term. They are still reviewing the situation I fully detailed here. The only reason I am an Amazon Associate after what they have done to Karl is simply because we need every single penny. Medical debt and other money issues continue to worsen and Amazon's actions with Karl's store have really hurt us badly.


Lee Child On Why He Signed with Authors United


Amazon can and will turn off the pipeline any time they want. While e-books and Amzon have clearly helped a great number of authors--including myself-- there are no assurances what they will do in the future as they control more and more of the publishing landscape as well as the retail world.


In case you are interested Karl is now on e-Bay. Anything in his store at Amazon is available --despite their posted nonsense--- and some of those items have made it to e-Bay. Anything else that has not gotten there yet can be ordered directly from him if you so desire. He often passes on the savings when folks order direct.

If you send me an e-mail I can help you get what you need or want.

Review: "Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel" by Lee Child

Jack Reacher was on the west coast when it happened. A sniper, loose in Paris, took a shot at the President of France. The shot was fired from 1400 yards out by someone on an apartment balcony. Some kind of new glass held saving the life of the politician. As the situation was investigated and the reality of just how difficult a shot it was to pull off a list of potential snipers with that kind of skill level was drawn up by those who should know.

It has been determined that several snipers from around the world are the best of the best for this particular situation. One sniper in particular is an American that that Reacher knows well having put him in jail a number or years ago. As the intelligence services of the various countries are brought in to chase their sniper in advance of the upcoming G8 summit in England, old contracts of Reacher’s put him in to help with this as he owes a favor to one of those heavily involved.  Just one of the ways-- and there are several-- that this situation is Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel.

Reacher is back and in good form in this latest installment of the long running series. Duplicity is rampart among all involved as there are many hidden agendas are at work in this complex thriller. Reacher spends a lot of time talking to people by way of the Socratic method to sift through the conflicting information and figure out multiple situations as they arise throughout the entire book. This is done through page after page of dialogue in a way that is far different stylistically than earlier books in the series.

In fact the entire novel, while good, is far different stylistically and not just in terms of dialogue than earlier in the series. Legendary for his traveling light with only a toothbrush--if that-- resulting in needing to buy clothes to replace whatever he is wearing, this Reacher hardly ever buys clothes. In previous novels, Reacher was always interested in the girl and almost always got her. In this case there is zero sexual attraction at work as he acts more like her grandfather or mentor.  Considering the age of his parents Reacher could be her grandfather and yet he can still fight like the Reacher of old in the few fight scenes scattered throughout the novel. One of which immediately puts the reader in mind of the classic movie Bond villain, Jaws.

Reacher, often dealing with characters that are little more than stereotypes, when the time comes is still busting heads and/or various limbs while taking names as the chase takes him across the globe. He certainly isn’t mellowing with age and gets the job done-- even when the odds are stacked against him by both friend and foe. While not nearly as good as early ones in the series, Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child is a good one that keeps reader interest page after page and is certainly much better than his last couple of books.

Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel

Lee Child

http://www.leechild.com

Delacorte Press (Penguin Random House LLC)

http://www.bantamdell.com

September 2014

ISBN# 978-0-8041-7874-7

Hardback (available in e-book and audio)

368 Pages

$28.00

ARC was provided as a result of my winning a copy by way of LibraryThing for my use in an objective review.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2014

Via Venture Galleries--- Lee Child says go ahead and break those writing rules.

Lee Child says go ahead and break those writing rules.