The Midnight Line

Jack Reacher, Book 22

By: Lee Child

Narrated by: Dick Hill

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Don’t miss the hit streaming series Reacher!

“A perfect example of Lee Child’s talent . . . This is not just a good story; it is a story with a purpose and a message.”—Huffington Post

Reacher takes a stroll through a small Wisconsin town and sees a class ring in a pawn shop window: West Point 2005. A tough year to graduate: Iraq, then Afghanistan. The ring is tiny, for a woman, and it has her initials engraved on the inside. Reacher wonders what unlucky circumstance made her give up something she earned over four hard years. He decides to find out. And find the woman. And return her ring. Why not?

So begins a harrowing journey that takes Reacher through the upper Midwest, from a lowlife bar on the sad side of small town to a dirt-blown crossroads in the middle of nowhere, encountering bikers, cops, crooks, muscle, and a missing persons PI who wears a suit and a tie in the Wyoming wilderness.

The deeper Reacher digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes. Turns out the ring was just a small link in a far darker chain. Powerful forces are guarding a vast criminal enterprise. Some lines should never be crossed. But then, neither should Reacher.

Critic reviews

“Each year Lee Child comes up with another Reacher. Each year I lap it up. Love it . . . Here, there is something subversive as well as page-turning. . . . I don’t know another author so skilled at making me turn the page, at putting me in the thick of it all.”—The Times

“Reacher is the purest distillation of the white knight in contemporary mystery fiction. This novel is a tightly plotted ride with characters who will break your heart and linger after you close the book.”—Mystery Scene

“Reacher [is] one of the most alluring and popular characters in contemporary fiction. . . . As always in a Child novel, pace is fast, twists and turns surprise, characters are well-developed, dialogue is exactly right, and the plot is very plausible. . . . Highly entertaining . . . This one is among the best [in the series]. It doesn’t matter in what order you read them since each stands entirely on its own.”—The Washington Times

“A timely, affecting, suspenseful and morally complex thriller. . . . One of the best thrillers I’ve read this year.”—The Washington Post

“Jack Reacher has become arguably the most iconic fictional hero we have.”—Men’s Health

“Compelling and moving . . . bold and mysterious.”—Associated Press

“This, Child’s twenty-second book in the series, has heart to spare, and it proves the franchise has plenty of gas left in its tank.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Compulsively readable.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[A] multifaceted novel about dealing with the unthinkable . . . It’s automatic: Reacher gets off a bus, and Child lands on the New York Times bestseller list.”—Booklist

“The book is very smart . . . [and] suggests something that has not been visible in the series’ previous entries: a creeping sadness in Reacher’s wanderings that, set here among the vast and empty landscapes of Wyoming, resembles the peculiarly solitary loneliness of the classic American hero. This return to form is also a hint of new ground to be covered.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Child does a stellar job this time by not following his customary formula; his usually stoic hero who rarely displays softness and compassion is hit hard emotionally by this case.”’—Library Journal (starred review)

Living Nightmare. Great Ending.

The first thing I have to do when listening to or reading a Reacher novel is get the image of Tom Cruise out of my head. Cruise serves the movie franchise well and I liked both of his movies. But of course in the book Reacher is a giant, something like old Clint Walker, dwarfing Cruise.

The novel begins with a missing person, a veteran as well as a twin sister. While simply drifting, as he always does, Reacher finds a woman’s West Point class ring in a pawn shop and simply wants to return it to its owner. It turns out the veteran’s sister is looking for her too. It quickly becomes apparent opioids are involved with her disappearance.

It’s well into novel when the first mystery is solved and the veteran is found. I confess it was growing a bit tiresome. But the rest of the story is a fascinating, intensely personal story of the horror one veteran must endure from war wounds for the rest of her life.

It’s not a typical violent action novel at all. I loved it and I hope you will as well.

This is written on my iPhone so please forgive any errors. I hope you like my reviews, because I read hundreds of yours each week!

A slight disappointment

You know how these have been getting worse over time? This one doesn’t break the pattern. It’s okay but not great. I saw the ending coming a mile away which is disappointing.

Dick Hill is his usual fantastic but I docked a point because he started the novel in a kind of stilted fashion and it took a while to find the proper stride.

What happened to Jack.........

Not a very good Reacher book at all. between the lack of action and Dick Hills performance this book does not live up to previous Novels. R.C Bray would be a better fit for this series, Dick Hill (who I've listened to for years) just can pull off multiple character voices. Same cadence, inflections, almost gives them all a speech impediment.

worthy

This is more complex than many of its predecessors. Child seems to be on a bit of a mission, or an expose here, and his characters lead the reader along the path of learning about the opioid epidemic, especially as it pertains to veterans. Reacher being a vet isn't just a plot device in this series, which explores the good along with the bad about service under fire. Plenty of Reacher-esque macho standoff stuff, but what is more notable to me is the recurring theme of logic. Most people don't have dialogue like people do in Reacher books, but that's OK. Most real dialogue is dull. People in Child's books contemplate what other people say before they respond, and people tend to give each other credit for being smart enough to parse out implications. It's artificial and sometimes scarcely credible, but it goes along with how Reacher decides to respond to scenarios, by playing them out first and narrowing the possibilities. And sometimes he's wrong, and he pays the price. It's an interesting world that I will keep reading about.

A good listen!

This was a great listen for my boyfriend and I. We enjoyed it on some of our summer road trips. Though it is not our favorite of the Jack Reacher books, we still really enjoyed the story line.