It’s Still Jack Reacher in The Sentinel

Lots of good things going on around here recently. Hopefully, you managed to pick up a few new free books this weekend. A few of them might still be on sale if you pop over and take a look at my freebie blog post.

And I have kicked off Read Your Way Through May. Looking for some books to read on important causes this month? Get started with the reading list that I have put together.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.

You might have heard that Lee Child is passing on the mantle of the Jack Reacher series to his brother, ten years his junior, Andrew Grant. Andrew Grant, now writing as Andrew Child, teams up with Lee Child in The Sentinel. They plan to write a few Jack Reacher books together, and then Andrew will take over. You can also find out more in this podcast, but it is fairly lengthy and I haven’t watched it yet.

But on to the book! The Sentinel is the twenty-fifth book in the Jack Reacher series. I haven’t noticed any issues with the transition from Lee Child writing alone to coauthoring with Andrew Child. It is still classic Jack Reacher. However, Reacher is becoming a dinosaur in his investigative methods. He has never carried a cell phone, doesn’t drive a car, doesn’t know how to operate a computer. He looks up phone numbers and addresses in the paper director, if there even is one. It looks like Rusty Rutherford, the IT consultant that Reacher is protecting from all of the bad guys in this story is going to give him a little help in bringing himself up-to-date on the technology side of things, so you can look forward to Jack Reacher with a smart phone as the series progresses. This could open up a whole new world for Reacher—online searches and maps, calling an Uber, Amazon dropping supplies at his door… the possibilities are endless.

Today’s teaser:

“…It was not my fault. None of it. The truth is I tried to stop it from happening. And I was the only one who did.” No one paid any attention.

Lee Child and Andrew Child, The Sentinel

As always, Reacher has no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. One morning he ends up in a town near Pleasantville, Tennessee.

But there’s nothing pleasant about the place.

In broad daylight Reacher spots a hapless soul walking into an ambush. “It was four against one” . . . so Reacher intervenes, with his own trademark brand of conflict resolution.

The man he saves is Rusty Rutherford, an unassuming IT manager, recently fired after a cyberattack locked up the town’s data, records, information . . . and secrets. Rutherford wants to stay put, look innocent, and clear his name.

Reacher is intrigued. There’s more to the story. The bad guys who jumped Rutherford are part of something serious and deadly, involving a conspiracy, a cover-up, and murder—all centered on a mousy little guy in a coffee-stained shirt who has no idea what he’s up against.

Rule one: if you don’t know the trouble you’re in, keep Reacher by your side.

Tell me what you think!

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