Blue moon A Jack Reacher novel

Lee Child

Sound recording - 2019

"In the next highly anticipated installment of Lee Child's acclaimed suspense series, Jack Reacher comes to the aid of an elderly couple...and confronts his most dangerous opponents yet. This isn't one of those times. Reacher is on a Greyhound bus, minding his own business, with no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Then he steps off the bus to help an old man who is obviously just a victim waiting to happen. But you know what they say about good deeds. Now Reacher wants to make it right. An elderly couple have made a few well-meaning mistakes, and now they owe big money to some very bad people. One brazen move leads to another, and suddenly Reacher finds himself a wanted man in the middle of ...a brutal turf war between rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs. Reacher has to stay one step ahead of the loan sharks, the thugs, and the assassins. He teams up with a fed-up waitress who knows a little more than she's letting on, and sets out to take down the powerful and make the greedy pay. It's a long shot. The odds are against him. But Reacher believes in a certain kind of justice...the kind that comes along once in a blue moon."--provided by publisher.

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Subjects
Genres
Suspense fiction
Thrillers (Fiction)
Detective and mystery fiction
Audiobooks
Published
[New York] : Random House Audio, an imprint of the Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group [2019]
Language
English
Main Author
Lee Child (author)
Other Authors
Scott Brick (narrator)
Edition
Unabridged
Physical Description
9 audio discs (approximately 11 hr., 30 minutes) : digital, CD audio ; 4 3/4 in
ISBN
9781524774356
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

We all wish we knew just a little bit more about a lot of things and could put that knowledge into decisive action in our work and in our personal lives. A little bit smarter, a little bit more savvy, a whole lot braver. Which is why we can't get enough of Jack Reacher. He's a fantasy figure, sure, but he's no cartoon character; Jack is made of brains, muscles, reflexes, and instincts just like us but way, way more so. Which is why you can read a Jack Reacher novel and feel like it's, well, almost real. And that's enough, more than enough, for a couple of hours of frenzied page-turning. You know the drill: Reacher is on a bus, passing through a random town, when something catches his eye. This time it's an elderly man about to be robbed. Reacher intervenes, but, of course, there's more. The man and his wife are deeply in debt to loan sharks for the most unassailable of reasons (daughter with cancer, insurance scam), so Reacher sets out to help, quickly finding himself in the middle of a turf war between Ukrainian and Albanian gangs. What to do? Kill them all, naturally. Child's plot tropes the ticking clock, the innocents in need, the overwhelming odds are starting to feel as familiar as his set-up, and not always in a good way. But, finally, we just don't care. We're here to watch Reacher work, outthinking and outmuscling the whole damn world if necessary (it almost is, this time). Will we get tired of Reacher at some point, tired even of our own fantasies of supercompetence? Maybe, but not quite yet.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Reacher is so irresistible a character that he draws fans from every demographic. Even NPR devotees like to read about him killing people!--Bill Ott Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

At the start of bestseller Child's riveting 24th Jack Reacher novel (after 2018's Past Tense), peripatetic vigilante Reacher rescues an elderly man carrying an envelope full of cash, Aaron Shevick, from a would-be mugger in an unnamed American city. Reacher escorts the shaken Shevick home, where he meets the man's wife and soon learns the couple are deeply indebted to loan sharks because of huge medical bills. Shevick is supposed to deliver the cash to an Albanian crook named Fisnik in a bar later that day, but when Fisnik doesn't show, Reacher ends up impersonating Shevick at the rescheduled meeting with Fisnik's replacement, a Ukrainian thug, who's never met Shevick. A turf war has just begun between the city's rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs, and Reacher lands in the thick of it in his efforts to help the Shevicks. Reacher applies his keen analytical skills to numerous violent confrontations with bad guys who aren't as smart as he is. Readers will cheer as Reacher and his allies, a resourceful waitress and two fellow ex-military guys he hooks up with, take the fight straight to the top of the criminal command chain. Child is at the top of his game in this nail-biter. Agent: Darley Anderson, Darley Anderson Literary. (Oct.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

In his 24th adventure (after Past Tense), Jack Reacher steps off a Greyhound to prevent a mugging and into an organized crime battle in an unnamed, medium-sized U.S. city. His attempts to save Aaron Shevick backfire and lead to his tangling first with Ukrainian gangsters, to whom Shevick and his wife owe big money, then with their Albanian counterparts. The town is sewn up between the Ukrainians and Albanian gangs, and the body count has already racked up before Reacher enters the fray. Once he meets others who've been wronged by the gangs, including a comely waitress and several former servicemen, Reacher is ready to rumble. He soon realizes that an even more insidious villain is hiding in the city. Assembling his crew, Reacher makes plans to rid the city of crime, save his new friends, and locate a heartless software developer. VERDICT Some villains are dispatched too neatly and some allies are found too rapidly, but it doesn't matter. Reacher's plans of attack and wry observations are what fans come for and what they get here. Child touches lightly on current issues--corrupt tech entrepreneurs, economic disparity--but keeps the action flowing in this satisfying entry. [See Prepub Alert, 4/8/19.]--Liz French, Library Journal

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Jack Reacher lends a hand to an elderly couple under threat from loan sharks and winds up in the midst of an underworld war in the 24th entry in this series (Past Tense, 2018, etc.).After Reacher saves an old man from a mugging, he finds out the man and his wife went into hock to get money for their daughter's lifesaving medical treatment. Meanwhile, in the unnamed city where the novel is set, the Albanian and Ukrainian crime bosses who have divvied up the territory are vying to see who can take over for good before the appointment of a new police commissioner. The sudden appearance of Reacher makes each suspect he's an agent for outside forces and accelerates the body count between them. That this is the best premise for a Reacher novel in some time, even if it's partly lifted from Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo, can't quite disguise that something has gone off in the series. Reacher's apologies to a suffering old couple that there's not much he can do isn't really what we want in a heroespecially one who has always taken such pleasure in pissing off bullies. Whenever the plot shifts to the machinations between the rival gangsters it bogs down in exposition. And while Reacher's ass-kickings have always been amusing, the series has never developed the dark ability to turn the violence into a deadpan sick joke. The carnage here should be funnier the more extreme it gets. It's not bad, but it's far from the tight, nifty execution that made the Reacher books so much fun to begin with.Perhaps if there were more time between chapters, Child's series could recover the polish it deserves. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The guy with the money knew where he was going. That was clear. He didn't glance around to get his bearings. He just stepped through the depot door and turned east and set out walking. No hesitation. But no speed either. He trudged along slow. He looked a little unsteady. His shoulders were slumped. He looked old and tired and worn out and beaten down. He had no enthusiasm. He looked like he was en route between two points of equally zero appeal. The guy with the goatee beard followed along about six paces behind, hanging back, staying slow, restraining himself. Which looked difficult. He was a rangy, long-legged individual, all hopped up with excitement and anticipation. He wanted to get right to it. But the terrain was wrong. Too flat and open. The sidewalks were wide. Up ahead was a four-way traffic light, with three cars waiting for a green. Three drivers, bored, gazing about. Maybe passengers. All potential witnesses. Better to wait. The guy with the money stopped at the curb. Waiting to cross. Aiming dead ahead. Where there were older buildings, with narrower streets between. Wider than alleys, but shaded from the sun, and hemmed in by mean three- and four-story walls either side. Better terrain. The light changed. The guy with the money trudged across the road, obediently, as if resigned. The guy with the goatee beard followed six paces behind. Reacher closed the gap on him a little. He sensed the moment coming. The kid wasn't going to wait forever. He wasn't going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Two blocks in would do it. They walked on, single file, spaced apart, oblivious. The first block felt good up ahead and side to side, but behind them it still felt open, so the guy with the beard hung back, until the guy with the money was over the cross street and into the second block. Which looked properly secretive. It was shady at both ends. There were a couple of boarded-up establishments, and a closed-down diner, and a tax preparer with dusty windows. Perfect. Decision time. Reacher guessed the kid would go for it, right there, and he guessed the launch would be prefaced by a nervous glance all around, including behind, so he stayed out of sight around the cross street's corner, one second, two, three, which he figured was long enough for all the glances a person could need. Then he stepped out and saw the kid with the beard already closing the gap ahead, hustling, eating up the six-pace distance with a long and eager stride. Reacher didn't like running, but on that occasion he had to. He got there too late. The guy with the beard shoved the guy with the money, who went down forward with a heavy ragged thump, hands, knees, head, and the guy with the beard swooped down in a seamless dexterous glide, into the still-moving pocket, and out again with the envelope. Which was when Reacher arrived, at a clumsy run, six feet five of bone and muscle and 250 pounds of moving mass, against a lean kid just then coming up out of a crouch. Reacher slammed into him with a twist and a dip of the shoulder, and the guy flailed through the air like a crash test dummy, and landed in a long sliding tangle of limbs, half on the sidewalk, half in the gutter. He came to rest and lay still. Reacher walked over and took the envelope from him. It wasn't sealed. They never were. He took a look. The wad was about three quarters of an inch thick. A hundred dollar bill on the top, and a hundred dollar bill on the bottom. He flicked through. A hundred dollar bill in every other possible location, too. Thousands and thousands of dollars. Could be fifteen. Could be twenty grand. He glanced back. The old guy's head was up. He was gazing about, panic stricken. He had a cut on his face. From the fall. Or maybe his nose was bleeding. Reacher held up the envelope. The old guy stared at it. He tried to get up, but couldn't. Reacher walked back.   He said, "Anything broken?"   The guy said, "What happened?"   "Can you move?"   "I think so."   "OK, roll over."   "Here?"   "On your back," Reacher said. "Then we can sit you up."   "What happened?"   "First I need to check you out. I might need to call the ambulance. You got a phone?"   "No ambulance," the guy said. "No doctors."   He took a breath and clamped his teeth, and squirmed and thrashed until he rolled over on his back, like a guy in bed with a nightmare.   He breathed out.   Reacher said, "Where does it hurt?"   "Everywhere."   "Regular kind of thing, or worse?"   "I guess regular."   "OK then."   Reacher got the flat of his hand under the guy's back, high up between his shoulder blades, and he folded him forward into a sitting position, and swiveled him around, and scooted him along, until he was sitting on the curb with his feet down on the road, which would be more comfortable, Reacher thought.   The guy said, "My mom always told me, don't play in the gutter."   "Mine too," Reacher said. "But right now we ain't playing."   He handed over the envelope. The guy took it and squeezed it all over, fingers and thumb, as if confirming it was real. Reacher sat down next to him. The guy looked inside the envelope.   "What happened?" he said again. He pointed. "Did that guy mug me?"   Twenty feet to their right the kid with the goatee beard was face down and motionless.   "He followed you off the bus," Reacher said. "He saw the envelope in your pocket." "Were you on the bus too?" Reacher nodded. He said, "I came out the depot right behind you." The guy put the envelope back in his pocket. He said, "Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have no idea. More than I can possibly say." "You're welcome," Reacher said. "You saved my life." "My pleasure." "I feel like I should offer you a reward." "Not necessary." "I can't anyway," the guy said. He touched his pocket. "This is a payment I have to make. It's very important. I need it all. I'm sorry. I apologize. I feel bad." "Don't," Reacher said. Twenty feet to their right the kid with the beard pushed himself up to his hands and knees. The guy with the money said, "No police." The kid glanced back. He was stunned and shaky, but he was already twenty feet ahead. Should he go for it? Reacher said, "Why no police?" "They ask questions when they see a lot of cash." "Questions you don't want to answer?" "I can't anyway," the guy said again. The kid with the beard took off. He staggered to his feet and set out fleeing the scene, weak and bruised and floppy and uncoordinated, but still plenty fast. Reacher let him go. He had run enough for one day. The guy with the money said, "I need to get going now." He had scrapes on his cheek and his forehead, and blood on his upper lip, from his nose, which had taken a decent impact. "You sure you're OK?" Reacher asked. "I better be," the guy said. "I don't have much time." "Let me see you stand up." The guy couldn't. Either his core strength had drained away, or his knees were bad, or both. Hard to say. Reacher helped him to his feet. The guy stood in the gutter, facing the opposite side of the street, hunched and bent. He turned around, laboriously, shuffling in place. He couldn't step up the curb. He got his foot in place, but the propulsive force necessary to boost himself up six inches was too much load for his knee to take. It must have been bruised and sore. There was a bad scuff on the fabric of his pants, right where his kneecap would be. Reacher stood behind him and cupped his hands under his elbows, and lifted, and the guy stepped up weightless, like a man on the moon. Reacher asked, "Can you walk?" The guy tried. He managed small steps, delicate and precise, but he winced and gasped, short and sharp, every time his right leg took the weight. "How far have you got to go?" Reacher asked. The guy looked all around, calibrating. Making sure where he was. "Three more blocks," he said. "On the other side of the street." "That's a lot of curbs," Reacher said. "That's a lot of stepping up and down." "I'll walk it off." "Show me," Reacher said. The guy set out, heading east as before, at a slow shuffling creep, with his hands out a little, as if for balance. The wincing and the gasping was loud and clear. Maybe getting worse. Excerpted from Blue Moon: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.