BOOKS: The Hard Way: Lee Child | News

I may be addicted.

Addicted to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.

Since about March, I’ve read about one Jack Reacher book a month. This time, it seemed like I just finished “One Shot,” the ninth book in the series.

Finishing a historical memoir on the rise of Vladimir Putin, I felt like a break before digging into “And There Was Light,” Jon Meacham’s Abraham Lincoln book.

Beside the Meacham was John Grisham’s latest novel, “The Boys from Biloxi.” I cracked open the Grisham, then glanced at the unopened next Reacher in the series. Fumbled through the first page of the Grisham, then looked at the 10th book in the Reacher series.

Grisham, entering a new world? Or the familiar Reacher entering a new world?

Sorry, John. I opened the Jack Reacher book, “The Hard Way.” Nothing hard about it, actually.

Here, Reacher is spending time in New York City, his latest stop in cross-country vagabonding since leaving the Army as an MP officer several years earlier.

As often happens to Reacher, he’s minding his own business, drinking coffee, when someone spots him – he’s a giant at 6-foot-5, with a military bearing … easy to spot. He’s asked if he saw a person get into a car parked in front of the coffee establishment the prior evening …

Soon, Reacher has been recruited by a mercenary military unit whose leader is paying a ransom for the return of his wife and step-daughter. He wants Reacher to help him get his wife and step-daughter back.

Things are not always as they seem.

Reacher teams with a former FBI agent who worked a similar case several years earlier – the mercenary leader’s first wife was also kidnapped and killed.

Nine of the first 10 books down – I still need to read the first one which served as the basis of the Amazon Prime series “Reacher,” the show which sent me down this spiraling reading addiction.

But even this deep in, I haven’t tired of Lee Child and Reacher yet. Still, Meacham’s Lincoln is next, then the Grisham, unless “Bad Luck and Trouble” demands to be read sooner.

Or maybe, finally, the first Reacher book.