#1 floor kill (March 1997) [amazon]
after jumping off a greyhound bus to chase a whim (find out what happened to a musician, “blind blake”). Reacher is arrested and charged with murder.
Following an attempt on his life while he was being held at a state prison over the weekend, Reacher is determined to find out what happened. He later learns that the person he was framed for murder was Joe Reacher, his brother. Unknowingly, Jack Reacher had stumbled upon one of the largest counterfeiting schemes in the United States. Subsequently, he takes on the vicious and ruthless butchers of a well-established city gang that operates a massive network of counterfeit bills.
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This novel is set in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia.
#2 die trying (July 1998) [amazon]
while helping holly johnson, an attractive young woman struggling with her crutches on a chicago street, they turn around to discover two guns pointed at them.
reacher and the woman are thrown into a dark pickup truck and driven 2,000 miles across the united states, not knowing why they were kidnapped and where they are going.
Finding themselves trapped in a seemingly remote location, they must work together to find the answers.
tripwire #3 (July 1999) [amazon]
Walking around Key West, digging pools by hand and working as a bouncer at a topless bar, Reacher finds himself wanted in New York by a lady. jacob.
Turns out to be rich, divorced attorney Jodie Garber, daughter of General Leon Garber, Reacher’s mentor, and surrogate father in the Army. Jodie hired an investigator to find Reacher because her father was dying.
jack and jodie begin to investigate their father’s latest project, a search on behalf of the elderly parents of his military son mia. Soon they find themselves pursued by a psychopathic businessman and military criminal crippled in the Vietnam War, who has a dark business and other secrets to protect.
reacher inherits a house and a stable girlfriend, and contemplates the joys of sedentary life.
#4 running blind (April 2000) [amazon]
(also published as “the visitor” in the UK)
It’s hard being a high-flying woman in the military. very rude. When Sergeant Amy Callan and Lieutenant Caroline Cook are found dead in their own homes, in bathrooms covered in army camouflage paint, their bodies completely unmarked, Jack Reacher is under suspicion. he knew them both, and he knows they both left the military under dubious circumstances, both victims of sexual harassment.
A lonely, homeless ex-military police officer who matches a psychological profile drawn up by the fbi is arrested by ambitious special agent julia lamarr. But when the body of another woman, Sergeant Lorraine Stanley, murdered with similar precision, is discovered, she frees Reacher. everyone fears that there is a serial killer on the loose. But the FBI knows something about Reacher’s past and has strong powers of persuasion. before long reacher becomes heavily involved in the murder investigation.
You have to find out what these women have in common and why someone wants to hurt them.
#5 burned echo (April 2001) [amazon]
Hitchhiking is an unreliable means of transportation. in temperatures over a hundred degrees, you’re lucky if a driver opens the door of his air-conditioned car long enough to let you in. that’s the conclusion of jack reacher.
You’re adrift in the fearsome heat of a Texas summer and need to keep moving across the open vastness, like a shark through water. the last thing you worry about is exactly who picks it up. he never expected it to be someone like carmen. she is alone, driving a cadillac. she is beautiful, young and rich. she has a girl who is being watched by unseen observers. and a husband who is in jail. who will beat her senseless when she gets out of it. if he doesn’t kill her first. the achiever is no stranger to problems. And there’s a lot on Echo County’s remote Carmen Ranch: lies and prejudice, hate and murder.
reacher can never resist a lady in distress. her family is hostile, she can’t trust the police and the lawyers won’t help.
#6 without fail (April 2002) [amazon]
reacher arrives in atlantic city, new jersey after hitchhiking with a couple of older musicians. He is approached there by Mary Ellen (m.e.) Froelich, a beautiful Secret Service agent who managed to track him down.
she has a special request for him: she consults him on how she could kill the vice president; countering those methods would help her considerably in her job: protecting the vice president. She accepts Ella’s challenge and enlists Ella Neagley’s former French colleague to help him accomplish the mission.
froelich requested reacher’s help in this matter due to suspicious and threatening letters that had been sent to the vice president but were instead intercepted by his protection team. Together, they try to find those responsible.
#7 persuader (April 2003) [amazon]
Walking down the street, Reacher sees Quinn, a man who should be dead. reacher is a man who hates unfinished business.
Ten years ago, a key investigation went awry and Francis Xavier Quinn got away with it.
now a chance encounter outside the boston symphony hall brings it all back.
and reacher sees his last chance to finish what he started all those years ago.
#8 the enemy (April 2004) [amazon]
On New Year’s Day 1990, in a North Carolina motel, a two-star general is found dead.
within minutes, the reacher is commanded to contain the situation. But things soon escalate when Reacher discovers the General’s briefcase is missing, and within hours, the General’s wife is dead.
reacher soon finds himself embroiled in a complex game of tug-of-war between powerful men in the United States military and beyond.
#9 one shot (April 2005) [amazon]
In an innocent heartland, an expert sniper commits five six-shot kills. Police quickly identify and arrest a suspect and build a strong case with irrefutable evidence.
but the accused man claims he is innocent and says “look for the cat”.
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reacher himself sees the news report and appears in town. the defense is immensely relieved; but reacher is here to bury the guy.
Shocked by the defendant’s request, Reacher sets out to confirm for himself the absolute certainty of the man’s guilt, but finds himself with more than he bargained for.
#10 the hard way (May 2006) [amazon]
after witnessing a $1,000,000 trade. Jack Reacher is hired by the rogue director of a private military company to rescue his wife and stepson, who appear to have been kidnapped.
As Reacher uncovers clues that could lead to a rescue, he learns of the Director’s dubious past, which involves a murderous plot against two former associates.
he meets a beautiful ex-fbi agent turned private investigator who helps him investigate to uncover the shocking truth and eventually gets involved in a standoff on a farm in norfolk, england.
The novel is set primarily in New York City.
#11 bad luck and trouble (April 2007) [amazon]
reacher is happy with his choice to be a loner, a wanderer and nearly impossible to find. But someone makes a small anonymous deposit into his bank account, triggering Reacher’s fixation on math and his investigative instincts.
reacher discovers that the deposit is a signal that only the eight former members of his elite team of army investigators would know. Frances Neagley, obsessed with math like a reacher, tracks him down due to the brutal death of one of her own. They race to reunite with the survivors of her old team and raise the living, bury the dead, and connect the dots in a mystery that only gets more complex with more murders. With tortured murders and the lives at stake of those the Reacher considers family, his usual emotionless demeanor breaks and he says of the killers, “they’re dead men walking.”
The team reverts to their old roles and routines with ease, their motto remains their holy rule: don’t mess with special investigators.
From Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Reacher reassembles his old investigative unit to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
#12 nothing to lose (March 2008) [amazon]
Based in Colorado, traveling from the town of hope to the town of despair, it soon becomes clear that Reacher is an unwelcome visitor to a town with many secrets to hide.
reacher can’t resist the opportunity to explore these secrets further.
especially the peculiar owner of the town who has employed the majority of the population to work inside his recycling factory.
#13 gone tomorrow (April 2009) [amazon]
reacher takes the subway late at night and routinely checks on his fellow passengers. four are fine, but the fifth is not. Going through his mental list of suicide bombers, he comes to the conclusion that the fifth is also one.
He is puzzled by the choice of time and place, as it is not crowded; on the contrary, the subway was excessively empty. he reasons with her, but she shoots herself; thus proving reacher wrong when he concluded that she was an attacker.
Determined to find out why she killed herself, he soon uncovers a massive conspiracy stretching from California to New York City and even Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of that country.
#14 61 hours (March 2010) [amazon]
in south dakota, a tour bus crashes during a wild blizzard with a cat inside.
jack finds himself caught up in the hunt for a killer and the protection of a key witness.
Meanwhile, a link to Reacher’s past comes to his aid and opens a path to redemption.
#15 Worth Dying For (September 2010) [amazon]
Reacher arrives late one night in a rural Nebraska town. In the faded bar of the town motel, she overhears a drunken doctor’s refusal to attend to domestic abuse.
The victim of the abuse is married to the descendant of the Duncan clan, which controls that part of Nebraska, keeping the population cowered and docile.
reacher convinces the doctor to do the right thing and ends up embroiled in a smuggling ring and an unsolved disappearance from twenty-five years earlier.
#16 the matter (September 2011) [amazon]
March 1997. Six months before the events of Killing Floor. jack reacher is still in the army. And there’s a big problem in a small town in Mississippi, where he finds a soldier’s girlfriend with her throat slit from ear to ear.
local problems? Or is he the assassin from nearby Kelham Fort, a giant base used by the army’s elite rangers?
in 1997, reacher’s orders are: go undercover, keep your distance, control the investigation. eventually, the official army investigation produces a cast-iron prime suspect, as does the undercover search for the scope. but the response of the reacher is not the same as that of the army. if he keeps quiet, will he be able to live with himself? And if he talks, can the army live with him?
#17 a wanted man (September 2012) [amazon]
four people in a car, hoping to get to chicago in the morning. a man driving, eyes on the road. another man next to him, telling stories that don’t add up. a woman in the back, silent and concerned. and next to her, a huge man with a broken nose, hitchhiking east to virginia.
An hour behind them, a man lies stabbed to death in an old pumping station. he was seen entering with two others, but never came out. he has been executed, the professional knife, the murderers disappeared. within minutes, the police are notified.
within hours, the fbi descends and claims the victim without even saying who he was or why he was there. all he was looking for was a trip to virginia. all he did was stick his thumb out. but he soon discovers that he has hitchhiked on more than just a ride. he has been linked to a massive conspiracy that makes him a threat to both sides at once.
#18 never go back (Aug 2013) [amazon]
After an epic and interrupted journey from the snows of South Dakota, the ex-military police officer finally made it to Virginia.
His destination: a solid stone building a short bus ride from Washington, D.C., the headquarters of his former unit, the 110th MP.
It was the closest thing to home I’d ever had.
why? He wants to meet the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner. she liked her voice on the phone. but the officer sitting behind her old desk is not a woman. is susan turner dead? in afghanistan? or in a car accident?
what reacher doesn’t expect to hear is that turner has just been fired from his command. nor that he himself is in big trouble, accused of a murder sixteen years ago. and he certainly doesn’t expect to hear these words: ‘he’s back in the army, major. and your ass is mine.’
Will you regret coming back? or – anyone else?
#19 personal (2014) [amazon]
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someone shot the French president from long range, but failed to kill him. the suspected sniper has some serious skills and is a hard man to find. reacher tracked him down once and put him in jail. now you are asked to hunt it down again and lock it up permanently.
tracking down the shooter will lead reacher from france to england after a killer with a treacherous vendetta.
You’ll need to find out who he hired and what’s behind the assassination attempt before executing your orders.
#20 make me (September 2015) [amazon]
“Why is this town called Mother’s Rest?” that’s all the reacher wants to know. but no one will tell you. It’s a tiny place tucked away in thousands of square miles of wheat fields, with a railroad stop, and surly, watchful people, and a worried woman named Michelle Chang, who mistakes it for someone else: her missing partner in a private investigation who thinks they must have started out small and then turned deadly.
reacher has no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, and there is something in chang . . . so he joins her and starts asking questions. he thinks: how bad can this be? But before long he’s plunged into a desperate race through Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco, and through the hidden parts of the internet, taking on thugs and murderers every step of the way, right back where he started. in the rest of the mother. , where he must face the worst nightmare he can imagine.
walking away would have been easier. but as always, the scope rule is: if you want me to stop, you’ll have to force me.
#21. night school (2016) [amazon]
prequel set when the scope is 35 years old.
In the morning, they gave the reacher a medal. and in the afternoon they sent him back to school.
Night school takes Reacher back to his days in the army, but this time he’s out of uniform. With trusted Sergeant Frances Neagley at his side, he must carry the fate of the world on his shoulders in a fiendishly clever new adventure that will make a cold sweat run down his spine.
no middle name [amazon]
jack “no middle name”, lone wolf, knight errant, ex-military policeman, lover of women, scourge of the wicked, and error-corrector, is the most iconic hero of our age. This is the first time all of Lee Child’s shorter fiction featuring Jack Reacher has been collected in one volume. Read together, these twelve stories shed new light on Reacher’s past, illuminating how he grew up to become the wandering avenger who has captured the imaginations of millions around the world.
- second son
- james penney’s new identity
- a guy walks into a bar
- in the background
- intense heat
- not even a drill
- little wars
- everyone talks
- maybe they have a tradition
- there is no room in the motel
- the image of the lonely diner
- too long [new]
22. the midnight line [amazon]
jack reacher wanders aimlessly past a pawn shop in a small midwestern town. in the window he sees a 2005 west point class ring. it’s tiny. It’s a female cadet’s graduation gift to herself. why would she leave him? reacher is also a pointer to the west, and he knows what she went through to get it.
23. past tense (2018) [amazon]
His most personal adventure yet, where past and present collide as Reacher searches for traces of his family in his father’s hometown in rural New Hampshire.
24. blue moon (2019) [amazon]
“This is a random universe,” Reacher says. “occasionally things go well.”
This is not one of those times.
reacher is on a greyhound bus, minding his own business, with nowhere in particular to go, and all the time in the world to get there. she then gets off the bus to help an old man who is obviously just a victim waiting to happen. but you know what they say about good deeds. now reacher wants to fix it.
An elderly couple has made some well-intentioned mistakes and now they owe some very mean people a lot of money. One brazen move leads to another, and suddenly Reacher finds himself a wanted man in the midst of a brutal turf war between rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs.
reacher has to stay one step ahead of loan sharks, thugs and murderers. She teams up with a fed up waitress who knows a little more than she lets on, and sets out to take down the powerful and make the greedy pay. it’s a long shot. the odds are against you. but the achiever believes in a certain kind of justice. . . the kind that appears once every blue moon.
25. the sentinel (2020) [amazon]
jack reacher gets off the bus in a quiet unnamed town outside of nashville, tennessee. plan to grab a cup of coffee and move on.
Not going to happen.
The city has been shut down by a cyber attack. At the center of it all, like it or not, is Rusty Rutherford. he is an average guy, but he knows more than he thinks.
As the bad guys move into Rusty, Reacher approaches them. . .
and now rusty knows he’s protected, that he’ll never leave the big man’s side.
reacher might have to stick around and figure out what the hell went wrong. . . and then fix it, as only he can.
26. better off dead (2021) [amazon]
digging graves had not been part of my plans when I woke up that morning. reacher goes where she wants, when she wants. she that morning she was heading west, walking under the relentless desert sun, until she comes across a curious scene. a jeep has crashed into the only tree for miles around. a woman is slumped over the wheel.
dead? no, nothing is what it seems.
The woman is Michaela Fenton, an Army veteran turned FBI agent trying to find her twin brother, who might be mixed up with some dangerous people. most would rather die than betray their terrifying leader, who has buried his influence deep in the nearby border town, a backwater that has seen better days. The mysterious Dendoncker rules from the shadows, out of sight and under the radar, keeping his dealings in the dark.
I would know the fate of Fenton’s brother.
Reacher is good at finding people who don’t want to be found, so he offers to help, despite feeling that Fenton has secrets of his own. but a life hangs by a thread. maybe more than one. but taking down dendoncker will be the riskiest job of a reacher’s life. failing is not an option, because in this type of game, the loser is always better off dead.
27. no plan b (Oct 2022) [amazon]
in gerrardsville, colorado, two witnesses to the same tragedy give two different accounts. a man sees a woman throw herself in front of a bus in what authorities will call a suicide. the other witness is jack reacher. and he sees what really happened: a man in a gray hoodie and jeans, moving like a shadow, pushed the victim to death, before quickly grabbing the dead woman’s bag and walking away.
reacher follows the killer on foot, unaware that he is part of something much larger and far reaching. . . a secret conspiracy with many moving parts, with powerful people on the take, all involved in an undertaking that leaves no room for error. if any steps are compromised, the threat should be removed quickly, silently, and permanently.
because when the threat is reaching, there is no plan b….
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