Can we ever get enough Jack Reacher? Let’s hope not

I can merely speculate about their transition. In the new book we meet a diminished Reacher. This powerful, violent man has gotten severely injured and been captured. Reacher is aging in real time, he was a military policeman in the 1980s. Of course even Reacher with a broken wrist and a severe concussion is still dangerous. As he comprehends his dilemma and takes steps to extricate himself we sense how this new story is being set up-it feels different.

Here’s my uninformed guess about this book: Lee Child is at the point where he thinks his brother is finally ready to do it all; to conceive Reacher tales and write them with ongoing advice along the way. “In Too Deep” really feels like it was written by somebody trying hard to sound like Lee Child.

There are certain things Reacher readers expect. Reacher wandering, no luggage, no obligations. Encountering bad guys and usually a damsel in distress. There will be some insidious criminal enterprise. He’ll deal with villains violently. There might be a quick liaison with the female he meets. He’ll drink gallons of black coffee. Then, evil vanquished, he moves on again.

“In Too Deep” has all that. There are FBI agents, perhaps one of them has gone rogue? There’s a ring of art thieves, they might be stealing other things as well. There’s the spectre of Russian involvement. Will we meet any Russians? We wonder.

There are some subtle indications this might be the transitory book in the slow motion passing of the baton between the brothers; we keep getting these details like, oh yeah, Reacher sure loves coffee, and, Reacher’s a Luddite, he doesn’t understand cell phone and computer stuff.

It feels like they are re-establishing ground rules. In one recent collaborative Reacher book he hardly drank coffee. In another he kept confiscating cell phones from bad guys and seemed adept at using them. It feels like they are scrubbing things up and laying down elements of the Reacher origin story for new readers.

This version of Reacher comes off as wooden and flat. His personality is almost robotic. The evil plotting of the criminal gang is all over the place. It gets confusing. I love this series. This transition won’t be seamless. I’ll keep reading them. Andrew Child will figure this out.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed