“That's the problem with denial. Reality doesn't care what you think. It just keeps rolling.” — Jack Reacher in “Past Tense”
I’m happy to say that Lee Child’s latest Jack Reacher novel “Past Tense” is a return to form for the author.
I spent quite a bit of time during the first quarter of 2018 getting caught up on Child’s thrillers in anticipation of the author’s speaking engagement at UNO’s Baxter Arena last April. There were a few I hadn’t read (some old, some new), and “binge reading” them proved to be an informative experience.
Child’s 2016 and 2017 novels — “Night School” and “The Midnight Line” — left me wanting. They didn’t have the same depth possessed some of his earlier works. That was particularly true with “The Midnight Line” — which felt more like a treatise on opioid addiction than a nuanced Reacher thriller.
“Past Tense” finds inimitable protagonist Jack Reacher wandering the United States — as the retired military policeman is wont to do. In this instance, Reacher is trying to make his way from Maine to San Diego. A nice, diagonal line across the country.
Along the journey, he sees a sign for a place he’s never been — Laconia, New Hampshire, where his father was born. Reacher decides to make a pit stop in the town to see if he can learn more about the man.
In a parallel narrative, Canadian couple Patty Sundstrom and Shorty Fleck are traveling to New York City along the same highways and byways of New Hampshire in a rundown Honda. The two soon find themselves stranded with a broken down car at a small motel run by a group of peculiar men who prove far too friendly — one of them has the “Reacher” surname.
As Jack Reacher digs up clues about his family’s past — and as the young couple tries to repair their vehicle and leave the motel — all sorts of nefarious deeds (past and present) come bubbling to the surface.
The novel’s two storylines don’t intersect until the latter stages of “Past Tense,” but both are compelling in their own right.
Small Town U.S.A is familiar territory for Child. In most instances, Child’s story structure generally stays firmly planted on Jack Reacher’s point of view (even when employing the third person narrative). He typically offers “peeks around the corner” into what other characters are doing.
Structurally speaking, “Past Tense” was a bit different in that regard. The storyline involving Patty and Shorty could have been a novel all its own.
In some respects, that style feels a bit closer to watching a multi-episode TV series unfold. It’s something worth noting, since Lee Child recently revealed Skydance Media is developing a Jack Reacher television series:
As always with my book reviews, I won’t give up any spoilers.
“Past Tense” is full of recognizable Reacher tropes, wrapping them all up in a story that involves disparate elements like bird watching societies, ghost towns, and a subplot resembling Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game” (a story I revisited recently when one of my nieces was reading it for a school assignment).
For the past decade, Child’s Jack Reacher series has been among my favorite thriller properties. If you are uninitiated in the world of Reacherverse, it’s well worth visiting.
Child has created one of the most compelling protagonists in fiction. I’m happy that “Past Tense” gets the series back on track.
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