Past Tense, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child, delivers insight into the Reacher family’s history, going back to the place of birth for his father. The trip leaves him on foot in the middle of rural New Hampshire, walking where he has to choose at a fork in the road between going to Portsmouth or Lacona.

Thirty miles away from the town, a young Canadian couple has car trouble and stops at a small motel buried on a small road in the forest where they are only guests. They find the motel unsettling, and Child leaves us just as uncertain about their fate for much of the book. This is a noticeable change in the past plots that work well.

Reacher finds questionable evidence of his father’s existence, but a 75-year-old assault case named Stan Reacher is called surprising, similar to some trouble Reacher finds in town. He wakes up from a sound sleep from a noise below the threshold of consciousness, prompted to find and help a woman under attack, and gives her assailant a beating. The assailant has a similar profile to the assault cases victim found on his father’s police records.

More connections are found, and they take him, just in time, to the strange motel where the Canadian couple desperately needs him.

This Reacher story has some new plot twists and holds our interest ultimately.

Interesting Items

Someone, somewhere, buys one of Child’s Jack Reacher crime thrillers every 13 seconds. 

Past Tense, published in November, is the 23rd Reacher novel.