Better Off Dead

Reacher is back in the 26th entry in the long-running crime thriller series (the second collaboration by Lee and Andrew Child, after The Sentinel), and so are many tropes that fans know and love. A strong woman in need of help; a dastardly villain with an underground lair and multitudes of killable minions; fight scenes galore, clinically described; crafty rescue operations; staccato sentences; and plenty of “Reacher said nothing” moments (though this novel is written in first person, so readers get a lot of “I said nothing” instead). The woman is disabled veteran–turned–FBI agent Michaela Fenton, who meets Reacher in the Arizona desert. She’s searching for her twin brother, who might be involved with a weapons smuggler named Dendoncker, and she convinces Reacher to help her. They concoct a wild plan to flush Dendoncker out of hiding, but things go wrong and Fenton is captured by Dendoncker. It’s Reacher to the rescue, aided by wary locals and friends in high places.