Bad Luck and Trouble

A Reunion with his old Unit causes Reacher to doubt himself

After reading "The Hard Way", the tenth book in the series, I was pretty much ready to walk away from Jack Reacher, but I'd already bought "Bad Luck and Trouble" so I decided to give it a chance and it did enough to convince me to keep reading.

The book benefits from being about a reunion of Jack Reacher's old Army Special Investigations unit and so isn't so focused on Reacher as a giant, aimless, killing machine.

The plot is stronger than usual. It would work as a stand-alone thriller but is stronger for being able to leverage Reacher's past. Some of Reacher's old team have disappeared. The rest assemble to rescue their friends or take revenge or both. The plot twists and turns, show more changing the reasons for the disappearances and the motivation and identities of the bad guys.

Unusually, Reacher shows some capacity for introspection in this novel, comparing his life to those of his former colleagues and asking himself if his drifter lifestyle is bravely independent or just a failure to thrive.

It seems everyone who was in the Special Investigations Unit looks back on the experience as a high-point in their lives. Their motto had been "No one messes with the Special Investigators". They had enjoyed the power, the team spirit and the license to find and to punish.

Their current lives can seem pale by comparison. As the investigation goes on, it's also clear that they are no longer as young, or as fast as they were in their youth. Yet they still feel licensed to punish, and punish they do. I think this is the first book where I've seen Reacher act as executioner rather than as killer. Twice in this book, he kills men who are not a threat to him, executing them because of the sins they have committed. We're right back at "Echo Burning" where Reacher was characterised as "never having killed a man who didn't deserve it."

"Bad Luck and Trouble" is a good, solid thriller, with a page-turning appeal. It also shows some signs that Reacher is growing up.

The only thing that jarred for me was the arithmetic at the end. Reacher and his crew take $65m as spoils of war. A lot of it gets spent on other people but the amount that Reacher is left with seems implausibly small. I would have expected at least $1m. Perhaps Lee Child needs to keep Reacher poor so that he can keep him locked into his increasingly eccentric lifestyle but, given the fuss the book makes about numbers and Reacher's facility with them, leaving Reacher with so little was very unsatisfying.

So, I'll read the next Reacher book after all. Who knows, maybe he'll grow up some more?

If you'd like to know how Lee Child went about writing "Bad Luck and Trouble," take a look at this interview.

If you'd like to hear an extract from the book, click on the SoundCloud link below.

https://soundcloud.com/random-house-audiobooks/bad-luck-and-trouble show less

Jack Reacher carries only a folding toothbrush and his passport with him. He doesn’t even keep a change of clothing – to press his plain t-shirt and jeans, he places them under the mattress wherever he sleeps for the night. He has no address and no cellular telephone. He knows his funds have dwindled to almost nothing. In Portland, Oregon, – where the Greyhound bus he was riding stopped – he needs cash. He possesses an almost “savant ability with arithmetic.” So, just as he always knows what time it is without looking at a clock, he also knows what his bank balance should be, but still confirms it every time he withdraws cash and has never been surprised to see a different total. Until now. Because there is one thousand and show more thirty dollars more in his account than there should be.

It is not a random number. “1030” is the radio code used by a military police officer who needs urgent assistance from a colleague. By calling his bank and feeding hints to a helpful customer service representative, Reacher learns the deposit was made in Chicago by Frances L. Neagley. She works for a private security provider in Chicago, Reacher knew her for ten of the thirteen years he served in the U.S. Army’s military police. For two of those years, she was a member of the special investigations unit he led. In fact, he recruited her. She would only deposit that specific sum of money into his bank account for a very particular reason.

When Reacher learns Neagley has traveled to Los Angeles, he flies there, too, and finds Neagley in a Denny’s restaurant just off the 101 in Hollywood.

Neagley gives Reacher an autopsy report, telling him, “Calvin Franz is dead. I think someone threw him out of an airplane.” Reacher’s next mission has begun.

Franz was a military police officer in the Army and a member of Reacher’s unit. Even though the members of the unit haven’t seen each other since it was disbanded, they have never stopped caring about each other. Franz kept their names in a book and talked about his days as a special investigator. So his wife called Neagley to inform her of his death. He was a solo private investigator handling mostly background checks. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department believes he was thrown out of an airplane heading west from Las Vegas. The autopsy report tells a different story.

Neagley convinces Reacher to reassemble their old unit to find the truth about what happened to their former colleague and friend. Reacher personally selected the team that also included Tony Swan, Jorge Sanchez, Stanley Lowrey, Manual Orozco, David O’Donnell, and Karla Dixon. O’Donnell and Neagley were captains, and the rest were majors – “talented journeymen working together, no stars no egos, mutually supportive, and above all ruthlessly and relentlessly effective.” Their mantra? “You do not mess with the special investigators.” Someone failed to get that message. All except Reacher have established residences, jobs, families. Theoretically, they should be easier to locate. But that has not proven to be the case. Something is very wrong, and Neagley convinces Reacher to help her find answers. They owe it to Franz . . . and each other. But they are being followed and watched, their every movement being reported up a chain of command. Are they all in danger? And if so, why?

Methodically, Reacher and Neagley begin following leads. They learn that Lowrey died earlier, but they set out to find the remaining five members of the team. Eventually, O’Donnell and Dixon make their way to Hollywood and assist in an investigation that also takes them to Las Vegas and other parts of the greater Los Angeles area as they learn about the ventures in which Swan, Sanchez, and Orozco became involved in the post-Army days. Their methods are unconventional and, at times, illegal, but inarguably creative, often innovative, and, for the most part, effective.

Meanwhile, in New York City, forty-year-old Azhari Mahmoud has begun making his way west using passports bearing several other Western names. What is his connection, if any, to Franz?

Reacher: Bad Luck and Trouble is a fast-paced, tautly constructed mystery that keeps readers guessing as Reacher and his teammates painstakingly examine the available evidence, struggling to understand why Franz was killed in such a specific and brutal manner. The unit members still function cohesively, anticipating each other’s thoughts and finishing each other’s sentences. They have never lost the skills they honed as part of the special investigations unit, and the other members insist that Reacher again serve as their leader, even though he is reluctant to do so. His physical size and strength are both an asset and a hindrance – he reacts and runs slower than the others, but his intellect and capacity to extrapolate information is unmatched. Still, the clues they locate are inconclusive and, at some junctures, downright confusing. They find themselves stymied more than once and are fallible. They fail to appreciate the significance of some evidence, overlook significant details, and even trust when they should not, their humanity endearing them to readers. Child skillfully brings the missing team members to life which, coupled with the team’s feeling for them, compels readers to become invested in their futures and cheer for Reacher, et al. to find them in time. Alas, there are some heartbreaking moments for Reacher, the surviving team members, and readers as Mahmoud navigates toward his destination and goal, and Reacher and the others manage to unravel what turns out to be a fairly complex and decidedly sinister scheme. The only remaining questions then are whether Reacher and his team can devise and implement evasive maneuvers quickly enough to save Mahmoud’s would be targets . . . and each other.

Originally published in 2007, Reacher: Bad Luck and Trouble is a riveting, action-packed thriller that resonates emotionally as Child showcases how intensely personal the mission is for Reacher. He and his team were “like a family.” As Neagley reminds him, “We had one another’s back. Then. Now and always. It’s a karma thing. Someone killed Franz and we can’t just let it go.” Child deftly and entertainingly proves that what Reacher and the rest of the unit told themselves was and remains true: “You do not mess with the Special Investigators.”

Thanks to Penguin Random House for a paperback copy of the book in conjunction with the Tandem Collective Global Readalong. show less

It's a rite of spring: a new Jack Reacher thriller from the pen of Lee Child. That means I can spend a day completely lost to the joys of a violent yet strangely lovable anti-hero. This year's adventure features a reunion of army buddies, a terrible threat and a very high body count. No scruples, morals, values, commandments or second thoughts are on display here, save one: loyalty to one's fellows.

Bad Luck and Trouble opens with a scene of horrifying violence against one of Reacher's former brothers-in-arms. As a result of this event, Reacher receives a message -- an oddity in itself, given that all he owns are the clothes on his back, a travel toothbrush, an ATM card and a passport. With no fixed address or telephone number, he's a show more hard guy to get ahold of. But he didn't train his personnel for nothing, and between Frances Neagley's detective work and his own, they are able to meet up in a city far from Reacher's wanderings and miles away from Neagley's home without ever exchanging a phone call or email. In a similar fashion, if a tad less mysterious and difficult, two others show up in short order. But the remaining three of the Army team of special investigators -- those who did the most difficult, bloody and behind-the-scenes work military police can do -- have disappeared.

The team votes to work together to find their comrades, with Reacher as their leader. And then the book is off like a hound after a rabbit, dealing out plot point after plot point, leaving the reader short on oxygen -- and short on sleep, at least until the last page is turned. One thing is certain: you do not mess with the special investigators.

Reacher is more violent and even oddly greedy this time around, increasing the "anti" quotient of his "anti-hero" persona. He has no qualms about murder, much less robbery. He constantly compares himself to the other special investigators, all of whom seem to be happy in their fairly conventional lives with houses, wives, children and actual jobs with actual wages. The reader does the same: how much longer Reacher will be able to perform the type of manual labor to which he customarily resorts to pay for his motel rooms? He's got to be in his early 40s by now, and digging ditches can't be as much fun as it used to be. It makes me eager to see how this experience will affect Reacher, which means I'm already looking forward to next year's thriller by Lee Child. show less

Once there’d been eight of them...military cops Reacher had molded into an elite unit. Suddenly, four of them are dead, killed by person or persons unknown, and Jack Reacher is out to repay the evil deed. “You don’t mess with the Special Investigators' . The army was a thing of the past, but in Reacher’s philosophy loyalty is timeless... imperishable. “There are dead men walking.” "You don’t throw my friends out of helicopters and live to tell the tale.” For vengeance to go forward there are questions that must be answered. Such as, why are they being hunted so many years after they’ve stopped making enemies? A blood-soaked chess game begins with gambits, and deadly traps. Reacher's own hunt takes him from California show more to Las Vegas. He knows that they've make mistakes, corrected them, edged closer to the answers they need in order to satisfy the "code" they continue to live by. between the hunt Reacher rekindles sort of rekindles an old love affair. At last Jack sees a frightening conspiracy beginning to take shape and suggesting that much more is at stake than any of them could have imagined. A point of no return is approaching, and soon Reacher, who is nothing if not code-driven, will face a mind-bending choice...perhaps his most excruciating one yet. The lives of friends... the lives of innocents...the lives of thousands. Which one and how can he pick? Like all Jack Reacher stories it's a tightly plotted...fast-paced...page-turner. show less

Jack Reacher, a former military policeman “back in the day” gets a message from the past through his ATM account: his former colleague, Frances Neagley, is looking for him. How does he know this? There is a deposit of one thousand and thirty dollars in his account: 1030.00. It takes him a moment to decide that it’s not a prime number, not a square root, not a cube root, and so on, until he settles on the simple message “10-30” which is military code for urgent assistance needed. There is a lot of idiot-savant-type showing off of obscure math ability first, a talent not only repeated throughout the book but shared by his military colleagues as well!

There were eight of these colleagues with whom he worked “back in the day” show more (a phrase repeated more than once too often): Tony Swan, Jorge Sanchez, Calvin Franz, Frances Neagley, Stanley Lowrey, Manuel Orozco, David O’Donnell, and Karla Dixon. Now someone seems to be picking them off, and Jack and Frances, and the others that remain set out to find out why.

Reacher is more disheveled than the typical thriller hero but the two women meet the usual thriller requirements of smart, beautiful, and sexy. The motto of their group is “same as ever: We investigate, we prepare, we execute. We find them, we take them down, and then we piss on their ancestors’ graves.”

There are plenty of suspenseful moments in the book, even though the “bad guys” are evident from the beginning, the clues are transparent, some of the coincidences are absurd, and the groups’ expertise at multiplying, deriving cube roots, and analyzing fractions on the spot seems more than unrealistic. It’s not the best of thrillers, nor the worst; but good enough for a rainy day or an airplane trip with waits and connections. show less

Reacher is nothing if not off the grid. No cell phone, no car, no email address... needless to say, no luggage. But someone's tracked him down, and deposited exactly $1,030 in his bank account. Ten-thirty. The radio code for MP needs urgent assistance. It doesn't take Reacher long to figure out the who, where, and why. But getting to the bottom of the list of names, numbers, and missing friends is a whole lot tougher.

Aw... Reacher has friends. And they're a lot like him. Who'd have guessed.

My friend Piglet said that the Jack Reacher series is "like a feminist James Bond" and that's a pretty good description, although Bond is more upscale and camp, based on this novel. This is the first of the Reacher series I've read, and I'll be reading more. I liked this especially because it emphasized a team approach to solving a crime, rather than being all about the Lone Hero(tm), and because most of the characters are smart and competent (I dislike thrillers where the plot is driven by stupidity), and because Child takes a geeky delight in details, and the details actually make sense.