Past Tense, by Lee Child

In Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel, Past Tense, Reacher once again demonstrates his knack for finding the worst kinds of trouble dwelling in a random small town.  As the story begins, Reacher starts out on the long trek from Maine to San Diego.  He doesn't get far.  His ride drops him in the middle of nowhere.  Not that Reacher minds.  After he's dropped off, he notices a sigh to a small town--the very town where his father was born!  Curious to see what he can discover about his father's past, he decides to check it out.

Of course, it's never easy for Reacher to get in and out of town without getting into trouble.  When he helps a young lady by beating the tar out of a stalker, it turns out that the stalker is the son of a Boston crime boss, who sends his goons to teach Reacher a lesson.  (They don't succeed.)  When a local man takes Reacher out to see where his grandparents live, it turns out that a local family is squatting on nearby land.  They don't take kindly to strangers, and want to teach Reacher a lesson.  (They don't succeed.)  Meanwhile, a distant relative of Reacher's is a few miles outside of town preying on unsuspecting travelers.

Reacher is Reacher.  Have toothbrush, will travel.  In Past Tense, Child says very little about Reacher's peculiar habits.  I don't remember a single shopping trip where he leaves his clothes in a trash can.  Another unlikely story element: even though Reacher befriends the pretty cop and the pretty county employee, he doesn't end up in bed with any women!  Maybe he's getting old and losing interest.

Speaking of losing interest, does he lose interest in some of the things he's encountered in the past?  When he discovers what his distant cousin is up to, I wonder if he thinks, "Wow, this reminds me of that insane human torture operation I saw in Make Me"?  Or, "This reminds me of that human smuggling ring I discovered in Worth Dying For"?  This is simply to say that, as rule, Child likes his Reacher books to be stand-alone stories like Past Tense.  But that sometimes makes Reacher seem static and not self-aware.  Every now and then a book will have a returning character or a bit of story line that continues from a prior book.  Not this one.  That being said, we do learn new information about Reacher's father, revelations that surprise Reacher but don't prompt him to make any changes in his life.

I'm definitely a fan of Lee Child's Reacher novels.  I love this kind of book, that stays on my mind when I'm not reading it and to which I am eager to return.  Past Tense was a little big quirky and somehow different from some prior books, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!