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All About Reacher
a weird place for a romance reader to start, but sure.
Jennifer Prokop
February 01, 2025
So, season 3 of Reacher the lesser (the TV show) is coming out next month, and maybe you'd like to prepare with Reacher the Greater (the books). On Twitter, I once wrote an entire thread, ranking and rating each book. Here it is, cleaned up and updated.
This one's a banger. It's great, the plot is really twisty, and you're gonna have a good time. Looking back, what's interesting about this one is that it's in first person, which we don't see again for a while, but I think it also explicitly frames out the ethos of the entire series and of Reacher himself.
Grade: A
This one starts in Chicago where Reacher and a woman are kidnapped off the street, and there's a whole thing where the cops assume Reacher is the bad guy. They end up at a cult in like Montana or something. I would say the pacing was a little off, with a slow start but a propulsive, exciting ending. You can also see Child trying to show Reacher's faults or fears, and there is a fascinating scene where he has to face his own claustrophobia. Also, one of my all time favorite scenes where he basically kills or maims (whatever), a guy dumb enough to offer him a cigarette.
I also feel like you could see Child experimenting with what kind of adversary is best? It starts slow but picks up speed like an avalanche rolling downhill.
Grade B+
This starts out with Reacher in Key West with a job: digging out pools by hand. I am not kidding. LOL.
Someone from New York is looking for him, and so he goes up there and discovers the man who was his mentor in the army has died and left him a house. Now the last thing Jack Reacher wants is a house, but the guy's daughter is now a total hottie, so he’ll stick around for a bit. One of the things I like about Child as a writer is that you can see him experimenting with Reacher's character: what is his past? how would he react to being tied down to a place? And I think this is what makes the series so fun to read.
Given my obsession with men coming home from Vietnam, it's no surprise this is one of my favorite books. The way Lee Child handles the story of a man coming back from war is quite different than the way romance handles these men. In Tripwire: HOOK HOBIE IS A KILLER, in Jayne Ann Krentz’s Gentle Pirate: THIS MAN WILL BE REDEEMED BY LOVE.
That being said, I am not sure the personal journey Reacher is on is super well integrated with the suspense plot, which all resolves itself in an office in the World Trade Center. That in and of itself makes for a very unsettling reading experience.
Grade: B
This is an interesting book for me, I would not say it's one of my favorites, but I do think from a craft perspective, it was interesting. Here's the plot: women across the country have been murdered and Reacher is a suspect. The crime scenes are all completely staged in a bizarre way, but no one is really sure how the murders themselves have been committed. So what's interesting here is that this felt far more like... Reacher working a case than previous books. We're seeing Child test-drive "Reacher as cop" in this book. Figuring out HOW it was done overrode the WHO was doing it, and I think ultimately that means the book left me a little cold, even though I admired the construction of it.
Grade: B
This one is kind of a miss for me, tbh. Reacher is hitchhiking in Texas and picked up by a woman looking for someone to kill her husband. I think for me, in order to believe a book, I have to really believe the set-up, and this is where it fails. Carmen is just tooling around Texas hoping to find a hitchhiker who is mean, strong, and capable enough to kill her husband? I think this is where I really started to develop one of my key theories about Reacher: he is deeply sympathetic to her plight, but somehow you can sense Child's disdain for her.
This is one of those books that is fine when you read it, but suffers on a second reading, and suffers even further upon reflection.
Grade: C
This is the first time we meet Neagley. This is a great book and I love it. The FBI or some government agency contacts Reacher because they want him to do a job, which is to check their ability to protect the vice-president. They fear someone is trying to kill him and they need to see if there are any weak spots in his protection detail. One thing I loved about this set-up is that you think it's going to be most of the book, Reacher trying to get the best of the secret service. But it's literally just an excuse to get Neagley on page. #Bless
There are a couple of ways this book is interesting. The woman who contacts them was in love with Reacher's brother Joe, who died in book 1. And you can see Child is bringing this woman in to give us some more information about Reacher’s familial relationships. This is a book that does a better job at braiding together Reacher's emotional life with the mystery plot. This is the stretch of books where I realized that "Reacher in small town" is compelling in a way "Reacher in a big city" is not. Another thing I really liked about this book was that I was completely shocked at how it all ended up. Where it started was not where you ended. We've seen it before, but somehow it was just perfect here.
Grade: A
As an aside, you just really see Child grappling with America as an idea in these books.
This is probably my second favorite Reacher book. It's written in first person, and it's an effective choice for storytelling reasons. (Also, season 3 of the show is based on this book!) Reacher gets involved in an altercation on the street that leads him into the home of a mysterious criminal in coastal Maine.
Here's what I like about this one: we see Reacher making mistakes. Just misreading signs and using previous information to go down the wrong path. Reacher in first person is kind of interesting, because this is not the most introspective man. But I think that's why it works here, he's just so CERTAIN about himself and so we as readers are certain of him, too. Also of note: Reacher tangles with a giant who is bigger than he is. It's one of the first books where we see...idk, Reacher off his game, I guess? Or Reacher as underdog. It's great.
Grade: A+
Another book in first person, and this one takes place when Reacher is still in the army. It's 1990 and Reacher gets sent down to North Carolina because a 2 star general was found dead. Reacher's job is to clean up the mess. The book gives off big cold war thriller vibes.
I don't know much about the Army, and this book is VERY ARMY, which is part of the fun. But the deeply humanizing part of this book is that Reacher still has family. His brother Joe calls him. Their mother is ill in Paris and the two of them go to see her. It's a fascinating look at the family dynamic of the man we've seen be entirely alone for 7 books.There's a great scene in the Pentagon at midnight where Reacher is meeting with the Chief of Staff, which is the highest ranking member of the army. The ending was too silly for me. It's basically Reacher vs. a tank. idk, sure, I guess.
Grade: A-
A book that allows us to gauge Reacher's capacity for fairness: a man he put away wants Reacher to help prove he's not guilty of a new crime. If I had to, I'd pair this one with number 4: Reacher is working the case + a connection to his past. The plotting is super intricate and I think it's much more effective at every level.
I guess I should say more about that one, but honestly, sometimes a Reacher book is just the platonic ideal of a Reacher book. Also of note, the first Tom Cruise Reacher movie was based on this book. I haven’t seen it.
Grade: A
Reacher's back in the Big Apple. This is definitely one of those books where a series of coincidences gets Reacher into a weird situation, this time with a guy living in the Dakota who runs mercenaries. On a recent trip to NYC, I made my friend point out the building to me. It’s where John Lennon used to live!
One of the fun things about Reacher in the big city is that it really serves to highlight how completely inept he is at like...the modern world. There's a scene where he's at an office supply store and just like WHAT IS ALL THIS STUFF, lol. Overall, though, I think this is a book that serves to highlight just how willing Reacher is to drift into weird situations. Talk about a man with no fear of taking risks, but the whole set up of this one was just too much of a leap.
Grade B
This is my favorite Reacher book. Needless to say, I was very excited about season 2 of the show coming out. The best part about this book is that we get Reacher's past with the people in his investigative unit, the 100th.
Their motto: YOU DO NOT MESS WITH THE SPECIAL INVESTIGATORS.
Plot of BL&T: Someone messed with the special investigators.
In another thread a few years ago, I told someone there's not a lot of character development in Reacher. And you know, that's both true and untrue. Reacher himself doesn't change, but I think Child does an excellent job of revealing these nuances in his character. And in BL&T, see how Reacher’s lifestyle, his aimless drifting, is not such a good thing. This is one of the first times we really see his true leadership capabilities, which I liked a lot.
One more thought. This is also the beginning of a run where I could explicitly see Child essentially writing fixit plots. In this one, it's "Does Reacher have money?" And basically he doesn't, he's running on empty. And here's a box that addresses and fixes it. All the books with Neagley are my favorites, but bonus to see Reacher with a crew.
Grade: A+
This is a perfectly serviceable Reacher book in terms of plot, but not a favorite. He's in Colorado, and he's stuck between 2 small towns: Hope and Despair. Here's what I wrote on GR, and I stand by it:
Honestly, the plot was just kind of dumb at some level. There's an entire thing about a guy going somewhere on a plane every night that doesn’t pay off. Maybe I was just judging it harshly after how much I loved Bad Luck and Trouble. But this one wasn't super memorable or worth a revisit.
Grade: C
This is another one in first person. Reacher's in NY riding the subway at night when he sees a white woman who matches all the markers of a suicide bomber. It’s twisty-turny and ends up somewhere very different from where it started. There are several times his leaps of logic just weren't believable to me. And, the ending is basically him slaughtering a bunch of people in hand to hand combat. Gruesome Reacher™️. Also, there's a post-9/11 Al Qaeda plot that that I didn’t feel so great about. IDK, It's not my fave.
Grade: B-
Starts with a rather spectacular bus crash on a snow-bound South Dakota highway. It's Reacher back in a small town, trying to protect an elderly woman who has agreed to give witness testimony, and they're trying to kill her. Like Persuader, we see Reacher trying and failing. This is another book where not everything goes his way.
But also, remember what I said about fixit plots? This book is the first in a 5 or 6 book run that covers a few weeks of time. Earlier books had months, years between them. I can tell Lee Child was like...shit, this guy is getting fucking old, I gotta slow down time. Reacher can't be 60 and kicking the shit out of everyone. So there's this daisy chain of plots starting here, then the next book starts immediately after this one, then a throwback book, then back to back books. So 5 or 6 years of books collapse down to 5 or 6 weeks of Reacher time. This is also particularly interesting giving how absolutely tight the timing of the book itself is: 61 tightly controlled hours.
Here's the other thing, this is the only book in the series that basically ends on a cliffhanger. And when I read it, I wondered if Child was between publishing contracts at this point? Because it could easily have been a series ender. This book just feels different.
I like this one for being tonally different & some hard losses.
Grade: A
There are 2 Reacher books that just have the most bleak, horrible kind of human misery at the bottom of them, the worst kinds of crimes. And this is one of them.. A few days, a week at most, after the end of 61 Hours, Reacher lands in a small Nebraska town where everyone is afraid of a powerful family of brothers.
I wouldn't recommend this to a Reacher newbie as the place to start, but it's an excellent book. It's a hard one to talk about, tbh. You know my whole theory is that at their core, Reacher books are about American depravity, and this one goes hard. Like, if this book was the basis for a season of the series, I would have a hard time watching it. Same with MAKE ME, which is the other one that is just hard reading.
Grade: A
Another throwback book to when Reacher was in the army. You know how River Phoenix (💔) was the young Indiana Jones, and it was the origin story of Indy as a swashbuckling adventurer? This book is that, but for Reacher. It's 1997. When the book begins, he's in the army; and when the book is over, he's not. He's sent to Mississippi to solve a case and uncovers a bunch of corruption. I like all these throwback books, and this one is no different.
Grade: B+
This book has a great opening. Reacher gets picked up hitchhiking (literally on the way out of town from the previous book), and quickly figures out that something is very wrong. But then, if I can be honest, the whole rest of the book is completely unmemorable. I think these brothers are trying to be terrorists or something dumb.
Just meh in terms of plotting, especially after a run of really strong, interesting books.
Grade: C
This book is the closest Reacher gets to speculative fiction. What if Reacher was a Dad? Lol. (This was also a mini-Reacher movie, and I have seen this one!)
Reacher has been trying to get Virginia and his old HQ ever since 61 Hours, hoping to meet the current commanding officer. She helped him and he thought she sounded nice. Maybe he’ll take her out to dinner, this is the most romantic thought Reacher has ever had. When he gets there, he discovers she’s been fired (or whatever it's called in the army). I really like this book a lot. Most of the books where past is present for Reacher end up being full of interesting revelations about him as a person and how he operates in the world. Tight plotting, interesting story, and deepens Reacher as a character.
Grade: A
This is another of the first person Reacher books, and if I can be honest, it's my least favorite. The fixit plot and the whole reason the book exists is that Reacher's passport is expired and he needs a new one, but lol, can you imagine Jack Reacher standing in line? The President of France was almost assassinated, and some government agency needs Reacher to help them track down they think is responsible. And since it happened in London, Reacher needs an updated passport, and the State Department gets him one without him having to wait in line. LOL.
This book really pissed me off. He's paired up with a young female agent who takes either anxiety or ADHD meds, and Reacher is a jackass about it. Flat out the entire time said things like, "Are you sure you need those? I bet you don't! Just do without!" It fucking sucks. And look, my other working theory about Reacher is that he is pure patriarchy, so you think I wouldn’t have been so annoyed, but let this lady take her medicine! Christ, Reacher!
Plus, the whole plot ends up being kind of dumb. It ends with him fighting a giant, which been there, done that. We saw that in Persuader. That being said, this is also the book where someone refers to him as Sherlock Homeless, which is pretty fucking funny.
Grade: D
The people in this book are pure evil, and what was uncovered in this book has really stuck with me. Sometimes it just floats through my brain, how people can be truly awful. I'm not going to spoil anything, but one of the things that is so raw about this book is how people can talk themselves into truly evil shit for money. It it is no exaggeration to say that this book HAUNTS me.
Remember that scene at the end of Fargo (the movie), with Frances MacDormand driving?
This is how I imagine Reacher at the end of this book and also how I feel at the end of January 2025. This was a HARROWING read for me, but also it's one of my favorites.
Grade: A
I like all of the books where Reacher is still in the army, but the plot of this one just defied all logic and reason. The story has to do with a missing nuclear weapon that is highly portable. So the stakes should be sky-high, but instead it just felt like Reacher and his crew wandering through Germany at the end of the Cold War. It's action packed but relies a little too much on coincidence. That being said, on a recent reread, I was like...well, Child sure did nail the fact that the Nazis aren't dead and gone. And yet, do we ever fucken learn. No.
Grade: B
Reacher sees a small West Point ring in a pawn shop and is like, no one who ever graduated from that joint would give up their class ring, so this woman must be in extreme duress. I shall find them. Did this seem weird to me? Yes. But I trust the Reacher process.
This is another fixit plot, because remember how judgey he was about that one woman's anxiety meds, he does a way better job here understanding why the woman he finds is self-medicating with...well...opioids. I also think that we get a real sense of Reacher's extreme malleability when it comes to the law, which I think is something that has evolved over his years of wandering. I liked this book a lot, it's probably one of my favorites.
Bonus, one of the bad guys owns a laundromat, and Reacher threatens to stuff him in one of the dryers, and we all know if Reacher make a promise, he’s going to keep it. This is the only time in the series we see this man doing laundry.
Grade: A
This is totally fucking weird book, tbh. There are 2 separate plots happening on the same timeline: Reacher is back in his father’s New Hampshire hometown, learning some secrets about the Reacher family. Second, a distant Reacher cousin has trapped some customers in his motel outside of town in a Most Dangerous Game type of scenario. You might be wondering how these 2 plots are going to meet up and the answer is… they basically don't. Except that on the night where the MDG is actually happening out with the hunters in the woods.... Reacher just stumbles upon it, somehow figures out what is going on, and kills all the bad guys. The B plot literally has nothing to do with the A plot.
This is where I really started to see that the Child’s heart just wasn't really in it anymore. It seems he had an idea for half a book and then just tacked on a way for Reacher to kill a bunch of bad guys. Which, I guess?
Grade: C-
This was another weird one, and considering it’s the last one written by Lee Child (after this, his brother started writing them), perhaps that’s not surprising.
The plot centers around an older couple who are in financial trouble. Reacher helps them get their money back from some bad guys and then starts a war between rival Eurotrash gangs who control crime in the city.
One of the things that Reacher books really lean into is specificity of place. Every town Reacher lands in is just as much of a character as he is; it’s a guiding principle of the book. This book almost belligerently refuses to name anything. The city is unnamed, the streets generically named, and everything else is as vague as possible: west side, east side, etc. It's SO WILDLY out of sync with the entire Reacher canon, so noticeable and annoying, that I assume Child was experimenting in some way. But ultimately, it didn’t work. A weird truth: The more specific you are, the more universal you can be. And by trying for universal—this could be any town, anywhere, instead it just felt generic and forgettable. .
And since we already know that Reacher is adrift, was this required? Did it accomplish anything? Anyways, It's an odd one.
Grade: C+
IN CONCLUSION, After reading almost 25 of these books, it’s interesting to see the evolution of his character. In the early books, Reacher’s reasoning for wandering was a rational response to his individual lived experience: an American who didn't know America, a man tired of taking orders, a man who never knew a physical home. But 20+ books in, Reacher became a commentary on the disconnection and placelessness of modern life itself. We're all a little lost, aren't we, trying to make connections through our screens and devices, lonely for a home we've been searching for but can never find. ❤️
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