I began 2024 with a review of the 28th Jack Reacher novel, in which I wrote that if what you want is a massive, bloody angel of righteousness doing a whole lot of bloodily righteous stuff leading to a bloody and righteous conclusion, you’ll not be too disappointed. So, it was with that in mind that I sat down to end 2024 with the 29th Jack Reacher novel. Unfortunately, I ended up a bit disappointed.
The idea is ok: Reacher begins the novel being pulled unconscious and with a shattered wrist from a car-wreck and awakes to find himself strapped to a metal table by an inept evil-doer by the name of Darren Fletcher (it was a surreal experience as a Manchester United fan to have to accept this as the name of even a semi-plausible criminal antagonist, especially when there’s another character whose surname is Vidic; it all seems a little unnecessary). Naturally, it was not a very good idea to strap Reacher down because it just forces Reacher to commit to destroying not just Fletcher but his entire criminal enterprise, which is on the cusp of expanding from art forgery and high-end burglary into cyber-espionage, blackmail, and the selling of state secrets.
Side-note: if you’re ever in the process of developing into an international criminal and stumble across a massive unconscious man, leave the guy alone. Even if he does happen to be in the car in which one of your associates just died and you suspect that associate of potentially having sold out to the FBI. Especially if the reason he was in the car is that he beat up a group of men in an attempted car-jacking and was subsequently offered a lift in gratitude. I mean, really, you’re not going to make it far as an underworld mastermind if you make poor decisions like that. Fletcher doesn’t make it very far.
But there are still three more associates to hunt down, one of whom turns out to have killed the father of a semi-disgraced Arizona cop who tries to kill Reacher over room-service breakfast because he looks a bit like her dad’s murderer and inevitably ends up as Reacher’s criminal-hunting partner and occasional bed-mate.
Now, I am less well equipped to spell out the problems than the legion of Reacher online die-hards who all utterly detest this book. I don’t detest it; in fact, I had a decent time reading it. But there’s a shocking lack of violence, very little jeopardy apart from one rather limp moment at the very end, Reacher does no preposterously Holmesian deduction and instead seems constantly baffled by rather basic technology. And he isn’t allowed to head-butt anybody because of the concussion he suffered in the car-wreck. Boo.
In Too Deep by Lee Child & Andrew Child is published by Bantam.
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