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It’s 1995 and Jack Reacher, aged 35, is being given the Legion of Merit for the second time — a reward for taking out a couple of baddies in the Balkans. Meanwhile, in a Germany that is still coming to terms with the fall of the Berlin Wall, an American soldier has gone awol with something for which the mad mullahs are willing to pay $100 million. “Something unhinged” is on the horizon. Thus begins the military policeman’s 21st battle to defeat the forces of evil.
The National Security Council is running around with its “hair on fire” but that doesn’t stop Dr Marian Sinclair, who never takes off her pearls, from riding Our Hero cowboy-style three times. Sergeant Frances Neagley, whom we have met before, cannot complain even though she adores Reacher. She has “haphephobia” — a fear of being touched.
Hamburg is where the deadly deal is to be done. “The gateway to the world” is finally regenerating after the Allies firebombed it in 1943: “Forty thousand dead in one raid. Britain had lost 60,000 in the whole war.”
Unfortunately the local neo-Nazis are also keen to get their paws on the prize. Thus begins an epic game of Cherchez l’Homme conducted, of course, without the techno-benefits of the worldwide web and mobile phones.
As a prequel, Night School, dripping with irony and oozing dread, is a somewhat subdued adventure — yet utterly gripping, nonetheless. Reacher’s mantra for dealing with his superiors — “short words, no math, and no diagrams” — could be Lee Child’s own.
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If, after sales of more than 70 million, proof of the excellence of his prose is still needed, consider the final paragraph on page 78, where twilight is falling on the city.
Acute observation reveals “every detail of the glowing scene”. Many so-called literary novels lack such skill.
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