A grimly efficient addition to the Reacher canon.
In the latest volume from Child, Inc., in which the retiring Lee's younger brother, Andrew, will soon take over the Jack Reacher franchise, the colossal ex-Army cop traces the killing of a woman in a Colorado town to a gruesome prison conspiracy in Mississippi.
The death is ruled a suicide, but Reacher saw a man push the woman under a bus and steal her purse. After tracking down and disposing of the culprit, he learns that the woman worked for a private prison in Mississippi and had returned to Colorado to run troubling statistics about the prison's operation past her former boss. He died of a supposed heart attack 12 hours before her death. Teaming up with the man's tough-skinned ex-wife, Reacher heads South to sort things out, "wired to move toward danger." Fearing Reacher will interfere with their deadly schemes, prison officials set up a network of roadblocks outside of town to pick him off. Meanwhile, a vulnerable 15-year-old boy, escaping his abusive foster mother in Los Angeles, travels to Mississippi after his birth mother tells him life-changing truths about his father. He, too, is targeted by bad guys. Most of the ingredients of classic Reacher are here. Our sadistic hero delivers bone-crushing blows to his hopeless foes with sadistic satisfaction ("Would you care if you stepped on a cockroach?"). He eludes the traps set for him and penetrates the high-security prison. He drinks a lot of coffee and beds a local woman. What's missing in this follow-up to the collaborative Better Off Dead (2021) is Lee Child's elegant writing, for which he hasn't received enough credit. The sentences here are short and metronomically flat, and the early sections are uncharacteristically disjointed. But fans who come for the action and the traveling tips—a folding toothbrush is best, he advises—will not be disappointed.
A grimly efficient addition to the Reacher canon.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-9848-1854-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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