Lee Child, Night School - Book Review

A school like no other. Graduate from this one though, you don’t get a shiny certificate, you get violence and terrorism. Just the place for Jack Reacher. In so many ways this latest book by Lee Child is as entertaining as the others, as fast-moving, as engaging. However, there has been a development. Jack Reacher is not the man we have come to know. He is different now. The Jack Reacher we are familiar with stood up for the victim, he cared about justice, there was a layer of humanity under his capacity for fixing things the violent way.

I wonder where that humanity went. In ‘Night School’, Reacher isn’t going after one baddie or a group of baddies, he is trying to stop a terrorist attack that could kill millions. A sign of the times. If we are trying to save millions of lives, perhaps we use a different standard of response, a more amoral one. More CIA than boy scout. The threat of terrorism makes us hard, ruthless. This new side of Reacher also affects his relationships, the few he has. Or should I say love life. Although I don’t see much love there. Sex as an act of physical release, like scratching an itch. Reacher seems to have a bit more feeling for his trusted side-kick Sergeant Neagley, although she has some medical condition where she can't bear to be touched - you could say her condition is a cloud with a silver lining in that it protects her from a doomed love affair with Reacher. As fans of Jack Reacher will know by now, there is no point in falling for Reacher. There will always be a bus waiting to take him away, or, now, in our brave new world, a plane.

Lee Child has put a lot of effort into researching a new kind of playing field for Reacher, a more global, interconnected one. Reacher doesn’t hop off a bus in the backwoods of the States, but flies to Germany to beat up skinheads there. It’s fun watching the notorious individualist having to play nicely as part of a team, well maybe not nicely. Terrorism can’t be stopped by the lone ranger though, however cunning or good with his fists. If we are safe in our beds tonight, we have lots of people to thank for it, although Reacher was undoubtedly at the centre of it.

Published now in paperback by Bantam Books, 2017