Book Review: Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23) by Lee Child

Title: Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)

Author: Lee Child

Stars: 4.5 stars

Review:
This is the first time l have read a Jack Reacher novel and it becomes readily apparent as to why he is widely followed by so many readers. It is an action adventure with the emphasis on action. Starting out on a cross country trip, from New England to southern California, he finds himself in his deceased father's birth town of record and decides to look up his ancestral roots. Meanwhile, an unknown cousin and business partners, begin a muderous adventure with a Canadian couple as the potential victims. As with all good action adventures the two eventually run together and it is up to our hero to  satisfactorily resolve this matter.

I very much enjoyed the book and have rated it 4.5 stars. I recommend it to anyone else who likes an action adventure with a solid, plain speaking, hero. I did not rate it five stars because I was left with a minimum of 9 bodies that were not accounted for to the local police departments. Small thing but still left me wondering how they were accounted for.

I received an ARC from Netgalley for my unbiased review.

Thank you Frank for your Review

Synopsis:
Jack Reacher hits the pavement and sticks out his thumb. He plans to follow the sun on an epic trip across America, from Maine to California. He doesn’t get far. On a country road deep in the New England woods, he sees a sign to a place he has never been: the town where his father was born. He thinks, What’s one extra day? He takes the detour.
At the same moment, in the same isolated area, a car breaks down. Two young Canadians had been on their way to New York City to sell a treasure. Now they’re stranded at a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere. The owners seem almost too friendly. It’s a strange place, but it’s all there is.

The next morning, in the city clerk’s office, Reacher asks about the old family home. He’s told no one named Reacher ever lived in town. He’s always known his father left and never returned, but now Reacher wonders, Was he ever there in the first place?

As Reacher explores his father’s life, and as the Canadians face lethal dangers, strands of different stories begin to merge. Then Reacher makes a shocking discovery: The present can be tough, but the past can be tense . . . and deadly.

Hardcover, 382 pages

Published November 5th 2018 by Delacorte Press

About The Author:

Lee Child was born October 29th, 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British TV's "golden age." During his tenure his company made Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of 40 as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars' worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series.

Killing Floor was an immediate success and launched the series which has grown in sales and impact with every new installment. The first Jack Reacher movie, based on the novel One Shot and starring Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike, was released in December 2012.

Lee has three homes—an apartment in Manhattan, a country house in the south of France, and whatever airplane cabin he happens to be in while traveling between the two. In the US he drives a supercharged Jaguar, which was built in Jaguar's Browns Lane plant, thirty yards from the hospital in which he was born.

Lee spends his spare time reading, listening to music, and watching the Yankees, Aston Villa, or Marseilles soccer. He is married with a grown-up daughter. He is tall and slim, despite an appalling diet and a refusal to exercise.