Night School

Child's latest Jack Reacher novel (after Make Me) is a prequel set in 1996. Reacher, age 35, is a military policeman fresh off a successful mission that earned him his second Legion of Merit medal for outstanding service. Expecting new orders in line with his excellent performance record, our protagonist is instead told he is going back to school, and that career development is a wonderful thing. Teamed with an FBI agent and a CIA analyst, Reacher quickly learns their classroom assignment is actually an emergency covert task force. Offices are set up, staff gathered, and intelligence revealed. A CIA asset, undercover inside a jihadist sleeper cell in Germany, has heard that "the American wants a hundred million dollars," but no one knows for what. Reacher and Sgt. Frances Neagley travel to Hamburg to work with the city's bumbling yet crafty police chief to identify and find the mysterious American. Reacher and Neagley investigate without the technology and Internet tools available in later novels, and the Y2K problem is a looming threat.