Night School – Lee Child
In the morning, they gave Reacher a medal. And in the afternoon, they sent him back to school.
It’s just a voice plucked from the air: ‘The American wants a hundred million dollars’.
For what? Who from? It’s 1996, and the Soviets are long gone. But now there’s a new enemy. In an apartment in Hamburg, a group of smartly-dressed young Saudis are planning something big.
Jack Reacher is fresh off a secret mission and a big win. The Army pats him on the back and gives him a medal. And then they send him back to school. It’s a school with only three students: Reacher, an FBI agent, and a CIA analyst. Their assignment? To find that American. And what he’s selling. And to whom. There is serious shit going on, signs of a world gone mad.
Night School takes Reacher back to his army days, but this time he’s not in uniform. With trusted sergeant Frances Neagley at his side, he must carry the fate of the world on his shoulders, in a wired, fiendishly clever new adventure that will make the cold sweat trickle down your spine.
My thanks to Patsy Irwin of Transworld for my review copy.
When we first met Jack Reacher in Killing Floor (20 books ago) he had served his country, left the army and was starting his nomadic lifestyle. As it became clear that Reacher was a highly decorated officer, readers realised that they had missed many of his early adventures and had not had the chance to learn what made Reacher into the man he was. The Enemy was the first book to jump back to Reacher’s army days and now Night School is giving another welcome return to “retro Reacher”
Plucked from his normal duties he is being sent to school to learn how the army can co-operate better with other agencies. Reacher is not happy, he has just been awarded a medal for successfully completing a rather unpleasant piece of “housekeeping” for his employers and now it seems he is being side-lined. But all may not be quite as it seems and it is not long before Reacher and (very pleasingly) Neagley are back doing what we love best – tracking down the bad guys.
Night School has a bit of a different feel than most of the previous books in the series. Reacher is very much working as part of a team this time around (not his tight group of Special Investigators) but a bigger entity which includes the army, the FBI and the CIA. There are more factions to juggle and the lines of enquiry are much bigger than Reacher taking down the few bad seeds in small town America.
I enjoyed the change of pace and the bigger scale of the story. The threat that the investigators are chasing down is a big deal, an international crisis and large parts of the book is set in Germany – putting Reacher right into the heart of the action.
Returning readers will enjoy some unexpected cameo appearances and there are lots of classic “Reacher” moments – the analysis of how a fight may unfold, Neagley being the best at everything and Reacher doggedly playing reasoned hunches. Night School is another great read from Lee Child and already I am looking forward to the next.
Night School is published by Transworld and is available in Hardback and digital formats. You can order a copy through this link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-School-Jack-Reacher-21/dp/0593073908/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479573922&sr=1-1&keywords=night+school+lee+child