The Secret by Lee Child and Andrew Child

The Secret by Lee Child and Andrew Child was published in paperback in 2024. It is currently the second most recent Jack Reacher book by Lee Child (and Andrew Child in this case).

I was bought two Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child for Secret Santa last year – Die Trying and No Plan B. I didn’t much enjoy Die Trying and came very close to taking No Plan B to the charity shop without reading it. But I decided to give it a go – and I enjoyed it! I still surprised myself by buying The Secret though. I picked it up in Sainsbury’s for £5 a few months ago, at the same time as I bought Murder on Lake Garda. It took me a while to get round to reading it because there was a flurry of books by my favourite authors – The Examiner, We Solve Murders, Death at the Sign of the Rook and Midnight and Blue.

Although The Secret was the next book published after No Plan B, it’s not a sequel. The Secret is set in 1992, when Reacher was still in the Military Police.

A hospital patient wakes to find two strangers by his bed. They ask him a question he can’t answer. Then he falls to his death from a twelfth floor window. At first, investigators suspect it’s either an accident or suicide, but then similar ‘accidents’ start to happen.

Meanwhile, Reacher is conducting an investigation into some dodgy guns. This is the sort of stuff I don’t like reading about. It’s just a personal point of view, but I find it very boring. In this case, it contributes absolutely nothing to the overall storyline. Luckily for me, it wasn’t long before Reacher was called up to join an elite team investigating the suspicious deaths. Then the dodgy guns entirely disappeared from the storyline.

The Secret is a real page turner, with some very skilled and prolific killers (although not too much gore) and a secret which goes back 23 years. Reacher and his new colleagues have a really challenging mission on their hands to track them down and stop them.

I’m pleased to say that I enjoyed The Secret. If you like thrillers with lots of drama (and a few guns), it is definitely worth a read. Will I read another Lee Child? Probably! To me, they’re not as good as Ian Rankin or Val McDermid, but if I’m short on books and I find one for £5 in Sainsbury’s, I’ll buy it.