The world’s favourite avenger is back in this 2018 classic thriller. Jack Reacher is the avenger that we all wish to have on our side, he is the ultimate back-up. Past Tense offers up plenty of violence and dead bodies. There is also a family secret that even Reacher feels no need to take any further.

Two Canadians are traveling in a clapped-out old Honda and have driven across the border in to the United States. The care breaks down as they reach their motel in the middle of nowhere. These two Canadians are stuck at the motel with no way to communicate with the outside world. They think that they are being listened too, then things turn decidedly weird.

Reacher is in Maine and as autumn starts to head towards winter it is time for him to move on. While he is heading through New Hampshire he sees a sign for the City of Laconia, his father’s birthplace. He had never visited the city and took this opportunity to visit.

While Reacher tries to investigate further about his father, whom nobody seems to have ever heard of. He expands his search to outside the city limits, and he finds that his family were from a place called Ryantown. There used to be a tin mill, now lost, and his family worked at that mill. When he reaches there, he finds more than he bargained for, and those trying to stop certainly find they are entangled in an argument with the wrong person.

Another bout of brilliant escapism from Lee Child in the form of Jack Reacher. In this story Reacher is like a modern day, American, Robin Hood. At least in this story there are bows and arrows! ( )

8/10
Interesting look into the past for Jack Reacher. ( )

Another well written Reacher but I miss Dick Hill's reading. ( )

Former Army MP Jack Reacher hasn’t changed much over the years. He is a loner who travels around the United States with a toothbrush, passport, and (one would assume) an ATM card, since he has to pay for accommodations and food. Reacher often hitchhikes; he is unafraid, since few predators would try to mess with this imposing and muscular behemoth. As Lee Child’s “Past Tense” opens, our hero is eager to get from Maine to San Diego. He unexpectedly gets sidetracked and winds up in Laconia, New Hampshire, which was his dad’s hometown. Jack’s father, Stan, was a Marine who died thirty years earlier, but Reacher is curious to know more about him. He decides to look up old records and enlists the aid of, among others, Elizabeth Castle, a records clerk, and Carter Carrington, an attorney and census enthusiast.

Meanwhile, in a parallel plot line, two Canadians, twenty-five-year-old Shorty Fleck and Patty Sundstrom, are lugging a heavy suitcase. They hope to cash in on its contents and make a new start in the United States. Shorty, a potato farmer, is strong and good with his hands, but he is no genius. Patty is a former sawmill worker who is intelligent, intuitive, and proactive. Shorty and Patty are exhausted and their Honda Civic is on the verge of collapse, so they decide to stay at a motel while they rest and get their car repaired. In alternating chapters, we follow Reacher as he digs up information about his forbears, and gets into violent altercations with various thugs. Meanwhile, Patty and Shorty begin to suspect that the owner of the motel where they booked a room may be hiding something significant.

Child’s dialogue is terse and involving. He is a skilled descriptive writer who captures the forbidding nature of remote areas that have no cell service and are, to a large extent, cut off from civilization. As we have come to expect, Reacher uses his extraordinary fighting skills to maximum effect against the one-dimensional baddies he meets. There is plenty of bloodshed (life is cheap in this series), shrewd calculations--especially on the part of the good guys--and an Armageddon-like finale. Although this is a fast-paced and mildly entertaining novel, it is also too formulaic, predictable, and contrived to earn a glowing recommendation. The murky biographical details that Reacher gleans about his dad are hardly worth the mountain of trouble he lands in during his visit to the Granite State. ( )

Great book! Child keeps getting better. ( )