Night School, Lee Child, author; Dick Hill, narrator

Although the novel takes place in 1996, it was published in 2016, as a prequel to other Reacher novels. In this book, Jack Reacher is in his mid thirties and is a Major with the military police in the Army. He is recognized as a talented officer and with two others, one in the CIA and the other in the FBI, he is given an assignment to uncover some kind of a terror scheme. They are all sent to Hamburg, Germany, to discover the whereabouts of someone who is plotting an act of terror. They do not know what is being planned; they only know that the plan has a price tag of 100 million dollars, so it is probably a plan that will cause death and destruction. They have to discover the plan and the perpetrator before he can accomplish his goal.

They know that an American is involved. They do not have much information to work with and Reacher engages others to join him, that he trusts, who have the necessary skills he requires. They must search out clues. Soon, there are what seem to be random murders and Middle Eastern involvement, but it turns out to be more than random. The story is confusing, not only to Reacher, but to the reader.

Finally we discover that a rogue serviceman has found 10 missing bombs, and he is selling them to the enemies of the Western world. As the search evolves, romance blooms between Reacher and a woman from the NSC. The romance was unnecessary and distracting. There were too many tangents and it often became difficult to follow the storyline. The narrator’s voice has somewhat of a tremor and his speech is very slow which can be a bit off-putting.

This was not one of the best Reacher novels. It stretched credulity too far. Reacher is painted as a super lover with unnatural powers, as well. He was a super hero, able to fight multiple attackers at once and survive unblemished, able to figure out motives and mysteries before anyone else with his insight and intuition that never failed. His heroism and strength is well known, but in this story, it does not go over as well.

21 books in order. And I finished them all. 

Killing Floor #1
Die Trying - Lee Child #2
Tripwire - Lee Child#3
Running Blind - Lee Child = The Vistor #4
Echo Burning #5
Without Fail - Lee Child #6
Persuader - Lee Child #7
The Enemy - Lee Child #8
One Shot - Lee Child #9
The Hard Way #10
Bad Luck and Trouble #11
Nothing to Lose #12
Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child #13
61 Hours - Lee Child #14
Worth Dying For - Lee Child #15
The Affair (Jack Reacher, #16)
A Wanted Man (Jack Reacher, #17)
Never Go Back #18
Personal - Lee Child #19
Make Me #20
Night School #21

This is not my photo. But I do have them all in different sizes. 

Jack Reacher is the main characters. Lee Child wrote pretty okay stories. Sometimes good, sometimes not so much. But it is still good enough for me. I like a certain consistency in books, like the character could not jump for being mature and calm one minutes and a juvenile person in the next few chapters. Jack Reacher is a person with no future plan, with no real planning and as a drifter, he got the freedom, and the escape for someone who are tied down with schedule and some sort of plan.

It is an escape.

Fighting a good fight, and a kind of avoidance of messy relationship and emotion blackmail.

I do read women books and some are not bad. Many are not so good. I finally found in Reacher what I dislike in books. Lies, manipulation, and pettiness. That's I found in many of the chick-lit I read that turn me off. I would like women getting in hot water, not because she secretly fancy her best friend's boyfriend, but see someone in trouble and try to give a hand. The kind of trouble beyond make-up, hair-do, and style change.

I read Lee Child as an escape as it doesn't require a lot of thinking, and it would not irritate like chick-lit.

Not all escape novel read the same way.

I read some other escape man-lit and they didn't go down as smoothly as Reacher.  

The plots are mostly involved with some form of detective work. And Reacher role is to get the job done. Reacher has a strong sense of justice. And he would act out this internal compass. He is more like a Batman without the dark past and the gadgets. And of course, without the rich man resource.

And he is vanilla. I don't know why he is vanilla, but he is. He didn't talk dirty, and he didn't do dirty things. It is not a lot of grey area for Reacher. 

The hidden tone of being loyal to the cause is there. But not so much. 

The world is a mess and sometimes we need to escape into a world where order is being restored. 

And Lee Child offers just that. 

Carry on. 

Jack got an uneasy assignment and he did well only to be sent to school.

But the school is not really a school but a secret cross departmental assignment.

This brought Reacher into Germany to try to find a guy who is only given a code name the American.

Good old Reacher doing detective work. 

Part of good storytelling is that some plots are there, just hidden beneath the surface and spelled out. Yet it is smart or show build complexity into the characters. 

When Reacher seeks the help of the local German police, in exchanging for running print for a person implicated for a murder. There is much more going on.

This is not the standard action movie type of story. There is only a small fight scene and one sex scene so far, for filling in the quota as a Jack Reacher story. Most of the book is about detective work, a nameless villain that Reacher is chasing.

A good story overall.  

The last 40 pages are the best. It is good that he got a dilemma and he act according to what he think is right. But it is still wrong when it is right.

Good way to end a story.  

One of the strengths of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series is the way it bounces around in time -- sometimes it's Reacher's post-military life, sometimes it's while he's serving, sometimes you get a couple of books in a row that are clearly tied together, sometimes it's impossible to tell what chronological relationship a book has to the rest. The central character is what matters -- is Reacher essentially the man we met in Killing Floor? As long as the answer is, "yes," the rest of the details don't matter that much.

So, following a successful classified mission, Major Jack Reacher is assigned to a training school. Which is just a flimsy cover for an inter-agency task force with Reacher, a FBI agent and a CIA analyst. The Intelligence and Defense world is trying to adjust to a post-Cold War reality, looking towards Middle East threats, rather than the Warsaw Pact. An undercover operative has indicated that something very big is on the verge of happening -- no one is certain what, where, or when -- but they know that a lot of money is exchanging hands to lead to it.

The White House's directive is simple: find out what's afoot and stop it. Whatever it takes.

Since this is Army-era Reacher, first thing he needs is Sgt. Frances Neagley, who continues to be just about as smart, possibly tougher, and more resourceful than Reacher. The CIA analyst and FBI agent are involved, but it doesn't take long for Reacher to go his own way (with Neagley half a step behind). The other direction makes sense, but this is a Jack Reacher novel, so you know he's right.

It's a race against time and unknown calamity in a tense and taut thriller -- just what Reacher fans want and expect. Not perfect, but a heckuva ride.

The thing that ties everything together for Reacher, allowing him to figure out what how the target pulled off what he pulled off was both entirely plausible and entirely hard to swallow. I have a hard time believing that no one before Reacher (or the target) figured it out before them. Even in the moment, with momentum driving the plot forward at top speed, I had to roll my eyes at it.

Despite the presence of Sgt. Neagley, Army-era Reacher books don't work as well for me. He's far better as a nomad, answerable to no one (save the occasional employer), not under any orders or required to follow certain regulations. Yes, given the setup for this one, he is able to disregard Army SOP, but only so much.

I liked it, but didn't love it. I had a lot of fun, and was engaged throughout. But it was a little bit of a let-down after Make Me. A mediocre Reacher is still better than so many books -- and this was both mediocre and better -- I'm glad I read this, and can't imagine how anyone who likes a suspense/thriller novel wouldn't. Still, Child is capable of more, and I hope he delivers that next time.