In 2019 I read 40 books, pretty evenly split between biographies/history books and non-fiction. Largely because of our tinpot dictator governors shutting down so much other activity this year (sporting events, concerts, restaurants, dances, etc.), I’ve been reading a lot more, and have gone through 56 books in less than eight months, including all 24 of Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher series.

Several months ago, there was a Ricochet post about favorite books and someone mentioned the Jack Reacher series, none of which had I ever bothered to try. I downloaded one from our library (not the first of the series, it had a bunch of people waiting) and whipped through it in about a day and a half. After that I was hooked; most of them took me no more than two days. I wasn’t able to read them in any particular order because of library availability, but I just finished the last one, which ironically is the first in the series, Killing Floor. It has an interesting prologue from the author outlining how he became a writer and his basis for the character.

Jack Reacher is a retired Army military police major and son of a Marine sergeant, and his adventures often involve military or national security themes. He has no fixed address and roams the country by hitchhiking or riding buses while trying to get a feel for the country and its people that he didn’t get to experience as a kid in his Dad’s overseas Marine postings or his own MP activities. The usual theme is Jack minding his own business on a cross-country bus, eating in a diner, walking through New York City or some podunk town in Nebraska or Maine, and lo and behold, crime and adventure find him. It usually involves him going toe-to-toe with a crew of nasty, evil villains while helping out someone who needs to be rescued from the bad guys. Jack is pretty smart, is a numbers freak, and his background in MP investigations serves him well, but at 6-feet-5 and 250 pounds, when the rubber meets the road he has to use brute strength to get him through the tough spots.