Night School

Not my Jack Reacher.

And if you like Reacher the hobo, armed with a tooth brush, an ATM card and this week's outfit of discardable down market clothing, perhaps this is not your Reacher either. But...

If you are still ok with Reacher the Army MP Major prequels, this is a perfectly ok suspense thriller. It is just my sense that you could have had anyone else in the lead role and the book would have still been ok. So just don't look for too many Reacherisms, lots of coffee drinking, hitchhiking banter, etc. i.e. the Reacher we love.

I also have a fear that we will be seeing more of the prequels in the future as the present day Reacher has been allowed to age in real-time (which I actually applaud in a series character) and is now 56 years show more old and getting a bit long in the tooth. But maybe we could have some flashbacks to the young Reacher on the road in the future.

"Reacher said nothing." & "He said nothing." count seemed a bit low. Perhaps fewer than 10?

p.s. Minor quibble: The title has nothing to do with the book and is just a cover story for the real mission which makes up 95% of the story. show less

A very tight plot and it was interesting that the ending mirrored the beginning.

Jack Reacher expects to get a plum assignment after a very successful operation. Instead, he gets assigned to go to school--something he quickly figures out is a cover for a covert operation.

This is the first Jack Reacher novel I've read, but I didn't have any problems with following along, which is a credit to the author. I was surprised that Reacher relies so much on hunches and instincts to resolve this case, though I can't say if that is his usual MO or if it just happened to be how this particular case went. In this book, he guessed right more often than he guessed wrong--or so it seemed--at least toward the end. Realistically, that would be hard to show more sustain over a series and keep it believable, for me at least. As is usual for this genre, Reacher sleeps with someone--in this case his boss--I felt like that was there because fans expect at least one sexual encounter. It didn't really seem to advance the plot in this book and probably could have been left out of the book entirely without really compromising the plot. show less

Jack Reacher collaborates! His colleagues are members of the NSA, FBI, and CIA. This novel is set in the past, when Reacher was still in the military. Naturally, he doesn't take orders very well. But his investigative brilliance saves the day. I found much too much talk and far too little action or suspense. It's as if Child decided that he wanted to compete with John Grisham;. he loses in that contest. The few violent incidents are phoned in; they could have been excerpted from any prior Reacher title. Reacher's singular attraction is that he is always alone, always forced to defend a concept or individuals by himself against overwhelming odds. Night School is atypical--and a disappointment.

For the fans of the Jack Reacher novels (Of which I am big one), the latest story takes place in 1996 when Reacher is still in the army. Wasn’t sure how I would feel about that, but turns out it is as good as those that take place in the present. Reacher is sent to school, but in reality he and two others (one from the FBI and the other CIA) are really part of a secret mission to find out what US property or Intel is being sold for millions of dollars. With some assistance, Reacher figures out that whatever is happening is happening in Germany. Another fast-paced, nerve-wracking, suspenseful story from Lee Child. He continues to thrill this reader!

By the time I read my fourth Jack Reacher novel; I’ve had a problem with the Jack Reacher character because he is that Übermensch Alpha male who hardly ever gets hurt, who’s smarter than everyone else and is always right, making him almost inhuman. Granted he is a fictional character but still, one would think about the wear and tear.

Night School is the 21st Reacher novel and it takes place in 1996 a time when Reacher was still in his Military Police (MP) days. This time the government takes him to Germany on the trail of a suspected terrorist cell, but things are not so black and white because a CIA asset, undercover inside the cell, becomes aware that there’s an American who has what the terrorist cell wants for "one hundred show more million dollars” (insert Austin Powers joke here), so Reacher and his new two friends from Night School are tasked with finding this American.

I enjoy reading Jack Reacher novels because author Lee Child is a fantastic writer, although in my estimation he’s out there with Stephen King when it comes to getting to the point. Lee Child’s research is impeccable and the ass-kickery never lets down, but like I said; when your character has the amazing ability of always making accurate leaps of fate and logic then things get annoying. Over all a good entertaining read. Will I read another? Sure, mostly because author Lee Child is a talented writer (21 books!) and he has Hollywood knocking on his door, plus A-list talent wants in on his projects, which in this day and age is what makes for a successful writer, I guess.

4 out of 5 show less

Just when I get the feeling the Reacher series is played out, Lee Child cranks out another winner. I thought the writing was a bit weaker in 'Night School' than in previous efforts, though that's more of just a feeling than anything else. As usual, his prose it lean and direct... just like Reacher himself.

Night School is one of my favorite types of novels in this genre. It's a 'needle in the haystack', find the bad guy(s) before something truly awful happens book with the twist that it's set back in 1996, meaning the real-time investigative and surveillance techniques we've become accustomed to via movies and TV shows like '24' haven't yet been implemented. A lot of Night School is therefore done the old-fashioned way, with hard work show more and, most importantly, intuition.

The plot is one that we've probably all had nightmares about. Jihadists are trying to buy something worth $100m from an American in Hamburg, and the 35 year old Reacher (back in his Army days) is brought in, along with specialists from the CIA and FBI, to figure out what's worth that amount of money, who's doing the selling, and how they'll close them down. There's some Reacher-quality violence, sex, and dialogue involved, which is always a big plus.

The story moves pretty quickly and bounces back and forth from Reacher and the Americans, to the Jihadists, to the 'seller', to various German authorities. I found it interesting having to constantly think back to that 'era' when reading about the various techniques used to track down the individuals. For example, satellite imagery, facial recognition software, ubiquitous video imaging, big data, and all kinds of stuff we're sort of used to just weren't around yet or hadn't been fully developed, but that didn't stop me from often wondering why one of the other technologies hadn't been used.

I thoroughly enjoyed Night School and have no problem with the author bouncing around on Reacher's timeline. He's aged throughout the series, but Night School shows that going back and filling in some of the gaps can be a winning approach by Lee Child. show less

The premise of Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel, Night School, is a solid one. Reacher, who is a 35 year old MP, along with a guy about his age from the FBI and another guy from the CIA are told to report to a class on inter-departmental cooperation. Only it's not really a class, but a top secret mission to discover and foil a plot about something unknown. The NSA has picked up noise about a big deal going down but they don't know much more than that. To discover what's going on without tipping their hand, they've chosen a few of the brightest men and given them the vast resources of the American government.

The strength of the series is the main character, Jack Reacher. He's the strong, silent type; a man who says as little as he show more can, and isn't slow to bang heads when needed (in these novels, there are always several occasions that necessitate the use of fists or weapons of various kinds). He's also a thinker. He looks at situations in a Sherlockian way by putting together random details into a coherent whole. And he has a cast-iron sense of duty and moral obligation to help those weaker than himself. But in A Wanted Man, a different version of Reacher was presented; a chatty judgmental guy who seems to bear more resemblance to the actor playing him in the movie version than himself. This guy was not likable, although he had a quick mouth and did the same kind of things the real Reacher would do, and he was not a guy I'd ever read a series of action-packed thrillers about. He disappeared for the next few novels, but he's reappeared here, much to the detriment of the series and the case he's working on.

When Night School opens, Jack (as I prefer to call this alternative-Reacher) is just back from successfully assassinating two foreigners in Europe, which is one of the things the Military Police does when there aren't sufficient unruly soldiers apparently. Didn't seem likely to me, but I'm not in the military. Jack joins the two other agents and they briefly hang out while Jack tells them things. Then Jack goes to Hamburg, which is where the thing was first mentioned and the other two really talented guys sit on their hands until they join Jack in Hamburg, where they sit on their hands in the American Consulate. Sometimes they make a phone call. Jack is stuck doing everything, with the help of Neagley, his staff sergeant, a Hamburg detective, and a pretty woman from the NSA, who is there to remind us all that this is very important and that all the resources of the government are at their disposal. And also to give Jack a lady friend and the author a chance to write some exceedingly average sex scenes. Jack thinks about her hair a lot.

The final quarter of the book hangs on Jack and his crew making a ridiculous mistake, a mistake so monumentally bone-headed that the real Reacher would have reacted by thinking some very pithy thoughts.

Look, I love these books. They're well outside of my wheelhouse, but reading about a highly competent and kind individual working a complex plan with effortless grace is a lot of fun. This variation though was not fun to read. This guy is not someone you'd like to have around, even in a crisis situation. Here's hoping the real Reacher is back in the next installment. show less