The Midnight Line

Publisher's Summary

Number one New York Times best-selling author Lee Child returns with a gripping new powerhouse thriller featuring Jack Reacher, "one of this century's most original, tantalizing pop-fiction heroes" (The Washington Post).

Reacher takes a stroll through a small Wisconsin town and sees a class ring in a pawn shop window: West Point 2005. A tough year to graduate: Iraq, then Afghanistan. The ring is tiny, for a woman, and it has her initials engraved on the inside. Reacher wonders what unlucky circumstance made her give up something she earned over four hard years. He decides to find out. And find the woman. And return her ring. Why not?

So begins a harrowing journey that takes Reacher through the upper Midwest, from a lowlife bar on the sad side of small town to a dirt-blown crossroads in the middle of nowhere, encountering bikers, cops, crooks, muscle, and a missing persons PI who wears a suit and a tie in the Wyoming wilderness.

The deeper Reacher digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes. Turns out the ring was just a small link in a far darker chain. Powerful forces are guarding a vast criminal enterprise. Some lines should never be crossed. But then, neither should Reacher.

©2017 Lee Child (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

"Narrator Dick Hill's gruff, evenly paced voice has become the voice of Jack Reacher, even when Reacher says nothing.... Hill successfully voices the many characters, male and female, cop and criminal, whom Reacher encounters." (AudioFile)

Reacher doing what Reacher does!

I can't believe people are already leaving 3, 2 and 1 star ratings only hours after this book being released, and not leaving a review as to their reasons. That's not fair to other readers or the author.
When this book first started I thought oh boy... this doesn't sound like the Reacher I've been hoping for. Michelle Chang has left him and returned to her home. He's feeling a little melancholy.
It didn't take too long and my opinion changed. By chapter 3 I was off that fence. This IS Reacher! The way Lee Child wrote this book is very similar to Make Me. It seems to me that people expect Reacher to be what he was at 36 when he left the army. For the books to be believable he has to age (along with the rest of us ). I'm a Mitch Rapp fan as well and I haven't seen any one complain that he's getting old and creaky and needs joint replacements.
In Wisconsin Reacher gets into a situation with seven bikers outside of a bar and a local cop offers him a way out that he refuses, the bikers decide he's "Bat shit crazy". I actually laughed. Oh happy day! This is the kind of Reacher book I LOVE! All he wants to know is where they got the West Point ring he found in a pawn shop window. After putting down six, the seventh directed him to Rapid City. Off he goes and there he threatens to put a local fence into a tumble dryer. The guy sends him onto the next link on the chain in Wyoming.
I've said it in other reviews, Dick Hill is the voice of Jack Reacher. As always he does an outstanding job. I wish the three books narrated by Johnathan McClain would be rereleased with Dick Hill narrating.
This book has my HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.
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Thank You.

255 of 265 people found this review helpful

Living Nightmare. Great Ending.

The first thing I have to do when listening to or reading a Reacher novel is get the image of Tom Cruise out of my head. Cruise serves the movie franchise well and I liked both of his movies. But of course in the book Reacher is a giant, something like old Clint Walker, dwarfing Cruise.

The novel begins with a missing person, a veteran as well as a twin sister. While simply drifting, as he always does, Reacher finds a woman’s West Point class ring in a pawn shop and simply wants to return it to its owner. It turns out the veteran’s sister is looking for her too. It quickly becomes apparent opioids are involved with her disappearance.

It’s well into novel when the first mystery is solved and the veteran is found. I confess it was growing a bit tiresome. But the rest of the story is a fascinating, intensely personal story of the horror one veteran must endure from war wounds for the rest of her life.

It’s not a typical violent action novel at all. I loved it and I hope you will as well.

This is written on my iPhone so please forgive any errors. I hope you like my reviews, because I read hundreds of yours each week!

37 of 39 people found this review helpful

Jack is back!! Great Reacher novel!!

As I write this review 30 people have written reviews on The Midnight Line at Amazon and the average rating is 4.8 stars while at Audible there has been one review by Shelley of Raleigh NC. Her review is 5 stars, but 17 people have rated the novel at Audible and the average rating is 3.0 stars. The 1, 2 and 3 star ratings are BS probably rated by people who hate Lee Child for some unknown but childish reason. I predict the average Audible rating in one month or less will be higher than 4.5 stars.

The Midnight Line is classic Reacher as good as the best of the series including Killing Floor, One Shot, Bad Luck and Trouble , 61 hours or any of the other 21 novels in the series. Shelley's review, the first Audible review, is informative and dead on. This is a solid 5 star thriller where Reacher is wandering until he finds a purpose (finding a small West Point ring in a Wisconsin pawn shop) and then following the clues until he finds the person the ring belongs to and fixes whatever he can. Along the way he wins a one on seven fight and he puts a bad guy in an industrial tumble clothes dryer set on high heat.

Lee Child has written another wonderful Reacher story and Dick Hill has narrated it perfectly.

84 of 90 people found this review helpful

A disappointing snoozefest

What has happened to Lee Child? Most of the Reacher books he has authored in the last few years have been nothing like his earlier works. Even the number of times "Reacher said nothing" has nearly disappeared. I honestly would not have known Reacher was the main character in this book if it were not for Dick Hill's narration. Speaking of which, can Dick read any slower? Let me suggest this. Lee, put the Reacher back into Reacher. And Dick, put some energy into your narration. Let's make the next one four or five stars. Or it will be my last one. Oh, Midnight Line; slightly better than the time Reacher spent 20 percent of the book (a few year's back) riding in the back of a car. But not much. If Reacher fans want to get a taste of what Reacher used to be like, turn on the TV series "Taken." The Bryan Mills character, played by Clive Standen, is a 30-something Jack Reacher.

16 of 17 people found this review helpful

Reacher fan, disappointing book

I'm a big Reacher fan, and this is the first book that I have given low marks. I was looking forward to the release, but was disappointed overall. The story was very thin, and seemed very unrealistic. To me, it was like Reacher doesn't know what to dio with himself, so creates busy work to keep himself occupied.
However, the biggest change I noticed was that he seemed to be omnicient and just knows everything. Even more annoying was the countless amount of times other characters ask him, not for opinion, but for his fortune telling skills of the future. "What will happen now? ", "Where should I go?", you get the point. Reacher comes of as a pompous know it all, which unlike the other books where he works things out, sometimes wrong, usually right, in this he is always right. I'm only hoping that the next one is better, or I might be done with the series.

21 of 23 people found this review helpful

I miss the Reacher from the early days

This book is just plain boring. Definitely not the Jack reacher for the early days of the series. Very little action and plodding storyline. Glad I could get my credit back

13 of 14 people found this review helpful

worst reacher story ever

This is the most unengaging Reacher story ever. Characters were thin, not well developed. any action was missing. Essentially this read was boring.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

The midnight line

I read everything this author has written and this is by far the worst novel.
It is like an adult Dr. Seuss repeating itself over and over. Perhaps if you were reading at your eyes would just glide past the repetition but as an audio it is deadly.
I can’t possibly fathom what the author was thinking in delivering such repetitive trash in such an uninteresting Story

10 of 11 people found this review helpful

REACHER, MY LOVE

I've been in love with ex-MP/former Army Major Jack Reacher, as created by Lee Child, since the late 1990s when Reacher first appeared in The Killing Floor. 20 years later, in book 22 - The Midnight Line - with superb narration by Dick Hill, Reacher's still got IT and I'm still in love. The story line is current -- opioids -- with lots of bad guys and Reacher doing what he's always done best -- go in, figure it out, then get it done in Reacher style. I think you'll enjoy this interesting and entertaining novel.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Thank you!

To Lee Child, once again a spellbinding, timely story. You never disappoint. To Dick Hill, in my mind's eye and in my heart, you are Jack Reacher.

7 of 8 people found this review helpful