No Plan B by Lee Child and Andrew Child

I was given No Plan B by Lee Child and Andrew Child by my secret Santa last year. (Yes, it really has taken me that long to get round to reading it!) It is one of the most recent Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child (whose brother, Andrew Child, now helps out with writing duties) and was published in 2022.

I was actually given two Reacher novels by secret Santa – this one and Die Trying, which is the second Reacher novel, published in 1998. Spoiler alert – I didn’t much enjoy it. That’s why I kept putting off reading this one. I actually had it in my hand ready to take to the charity shop, when I decided I would actually read it.

And I’m pleased to say I enjoyed it a lot more than Die Trying.

In No Plan B, Reacher sees a woman fall in front of a bus and die. Others are convinced it was suicide, but Reacher knows she was pushed. He follows the killer and gets a quick glance inside the dead woman’s stolen bag. There is a letter in there. Reacher decides he needs to know why the woman died and who killed her…

It’s not long before he sets off on a dangerous journey with a female sidekick to get to the bottom of a very nasty plot.

Meanwhile, a teenager has stolen money from his foster carer and is on a long and dangerous bus journey, a businessman is out to avenge the death of his son and the bosses of a prison have a big PR event to organise.

No Plan B is a real page turner with lots of twists and turns and a very satisfactory ending. On the flipside, you have to accept that the whole thing is rather far fetched. The number of people Reacher kills and injures during his investigations is off the scale and the number of times he escapes from impossible situations is ridiculous. But if you like that sort of thing, I would definitely recommend No Plan B.

Would I read another Reacher? Maybe…