Jack Reacher series | Rosie Amber

No Middle Name: Jack Reacher, The Complete Collected Short Stories by Lee Child
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

No Middle Name is a Jack Reacher action adventure short story collection.

Twelve stories all featuring Reacher at different stages of his life from a teenager to his nomadic post-army life, which is the basis for many of the full length novels.

My two favourite were Second Son and High Heat both showing teenager Reacher. Second Son, especially, highlighted Reacher’s unique way of thinking, and there was a good touch of family life which is absent in later books.

The stories did vary in length, some feeling like short novellas, which was fine with me as generally I prefer a longer tale. I’m quite late getting to read the Jack Reacher books, but I do enjoy them. The tag line for this book ‘We all need Jack Reacher, a righteous avenger for our troubled times’ is most suitable for how I feel at the end of each of these books.

View all my reviews on Goodreads

Book Description:

Jack ‘No Middle Name’ Reacher, lone wolf, knight errant, ex military cop, lover of women, scourge of the wicked and righter of wrongs, is the most iconic hero for our age. This is the first time all Lee Child’s shorter fiction featuring Jack Reacher has been collected into one volume. Read together, these twelve stories shed new light on Reacher’s past, illuminating how he grew up and developed into the wandering avenger who has captured the imagination of millions around the world.

The twelve stories include a brand new novella, Too Much Time.

The other stories in the collection are:

Second Son
James Penney’s New Identity
Guy Walks Into a Bar
Deep Down, High Heat
Not a Drill
Small Wars

All of which have previously been published as ebook shorts.

Added to these is every other Reacher short story that Child has written:

Everyone Talks
Maybe They Have a Tradition
No Room at the Motel
The Picture of the Lonely Diner

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

Better Off Dead by Lee Child
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Better Off Dead Is Book #26 in the Jack Reacher action adventure series.

This one is co-written with Lee Child’s brother Andrew. So it isn’t surprising to note that there are slight differences to Jack and the story arc that fans have come to expect.

Jack is still there, but he is just not quite the Jack that we all have come to love and support. This time Jack is heading to the west coast of America when his hitch-hiking leaves him short of his destination. He spots a crashed jeep and goes to rescue the driver, and so the adventure begins.

Michaela Fenton is searching for her brother; she fears that he is mixed up with a drug dealer and all round thug. Reacher is intrigued enough to help out and there is a bit of interest in that the sleepy town is right on the border with Mexico.

This is still a moderate read which kept me interested, but it wasn’t as memorable as some of the previous stories.

View all my reviews on Goodreads

Reacher never backs down from a problem. And he’s about to find a big one, on a deserted Arizona road, where a Jeep has crashed into the only tree for miles around. Under the merciless desert sun, nothing is as it seems. Minutes later Reacher is heading into the nearby border town, a backwater that has seen better days. Next to him is Michaela Fenton, an army veteran turned FBI agent, who is trying to find her twin brother. He might have got mixed up with some dangerous people. And Reacher might just need to pay them a visit. Their leader has burrowed his influence deep into the town. Just to get in and meet the mysterious Dendoncker, Reacher is going to have to achieve the impossible. To get answers will be even harder. There are people in this hostile, empty place who would rather die than reveal their secrets. But then, if Reacher is coming after you, you might be better off dead.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS