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The Midnight Line
Cover of The Midnight Line
The Midnight Line
by Lee Child
Borrow Borrow
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •  Lee Child returns with a gripping new powerhouse thriller featuring Jack Reacher, “one of this century’s most original, tantalizing pop-fiction heroes” (The Washington Post).

BONUS: Includes a sneak peek of Lee Child’s new novel, Past Tense.
Reacher takes a stroll through a small Wisconsin town and sees a class ring in a pawn shop window: West Point 2005. A tough year to graduate: Iraq, then Afghanistan. The ring is tiny, for a woman, and it has her initials engraved on the inside. Reacher wonders what unlucky circumstance made her give up something she earned over four hard years. He decides to find out. And find the woman. And return her ring. Why not?
So begins a harrowing journey that takes Reacher through the upper Midwest, from a lowlife bar on the sad side of small town to a dirt-blown crossroads in the middle of nowhere, encountering bikers, cops, crooks, muscle, and a missing persons PI who wears a suit and a tie in the Wyoming wilderness.
The deeper Reacher digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes. Turns out the ring was just a small link in a far darker chain. Powerful forces are guarding a vast criminal enterprise. Some lines should never be crossed. But then, neither should Reacher.
Praise for The Midnight Line
 
“Puts Reacher just where we want him.”The New York Times Book Review
“A gem.”Chicago Tribune
 
“A timely, suspenseful, morally complex thriller, one of the best I’ve read this year . . . Child weaves in a passionately told history of opioids in American life. . . . Child’s outrage over it is only just barely contained.”The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“A perfect example of Lee Child’s talent . . . Lee Child is the master of plotting. . . . This is Child’s most emotional book to date. . . . This is not just a good story; it is a story with a purpose and a message.”Huffington Post
 
“I just read the new Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. . . . It is as good as they always are. I read every single one.”Malcolm Gladwell
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •  Lee Child returns with a gripping new powerhouse thriller featuring Jack Reacher, “one of this century’s most original, tantalizing pop-fiction heroes” (The Washington Post).

BONUS: Includes a sneak peek of Lee Child’s new novel, Past Tense.
Reacher takes a stroll through a small Wisconsin town and sees a class ring in a pawn shop window: West Point 2005. A tough year to graduate: Iraq, then Afghanistan. The ring is tiny, for a woman, and it has her initials engraved on the inside. Reacher wonders what unlucky circumstance made her give up something she earned over four hard years. He decides to find out. And find the woman. And return her ring. Why not?
So begins a harrowing journey that takes Reacher through the upper Midwest, from a lowlife bar on the sad side of small town to a dirt-blown crossroads in the middle of nowhere, encountering bikers, cops, crooks, muscle, and a missing persons PI who wears a suit and a tie in the Wyoming wilderness.
The deeper Reacher digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes. Turns out the ring was just a small link in a far darker chain. Powerful forces are guarding a vast criminal enterprise. Some lines should never be crossed. But then, neither should Reacher.
Praise for The Midnight Line
 
“Puts Reacher just where we want him.”The New York Times Book Review
“A gem.”Chicago Tribune
 
“A timely, suspenseful, morally complex thriller, one of the best I’ve read this year . . . Child weaves in a passionately told history of opioids in American life. . . . Child’s outrage over it is only just barely contained.”The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“A perfect example of Lee Child’s talent . . . Lee Child is the master of plotting. . . . This is Child’s most emotional book to date. . . . This is not just a good story; it is a story with a purpose and a message.”Huffington Post
 
“I just read the new Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. . . . It is as good as they always are. I read every single one.”Malcolm Gladwell
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Excerpts-
  • From the book Chapter 1

    Jack Reacher and Michelle Chang spent three days in Milwaukee. On the fourth morning she was gone. Reacher came back to the room with coffee and found a note on his pillow. He had seen such notes before. They all said the same thing. Either directly or indirectly. Chang’s note was indirect. And more elegant than most. Not in terms of presentation. It was a ballpoint scrawl on motel notepaper gone wavy with damp. But elegant in terms of expression. She had used a simile, to explain and flatter and apologize all at once. She had written, “You’re like New York City. I love to visit, but I could never live there.”

    He did what he always did. He let her go. He understood. No apology required. He couldn’t live anywhere. His whole life was a visit. Who could put up with that? He drank his coffee, and then hers, and took his toothbrush from the bathroom glass, and walked away, through a knot of streets, left and right, toward the bus depot. She would be in a taxi, he guessed. To the airport. She had a gold card and a cell phone.

    At the depot he did what he always did. He bought a ticket for the first bus out, no matter where it was going. Which turned out to be an end-­of-­the-­line place way north and west, on the shore of Lake Superior. Fundamentally the wrong direction. Colder, not warmer. But rules were rules, so he climbed aboard. He sat and watched out the window. Wisconsin flashed by, its hayfields baled and stubbly, its pastures worn, its trees dark and heavy. It was the end of summer.

    It was the end of several things. She had asked the usual questions. Which were really statements in disguise. She could understand a year. Absolutely. A kid who grew up on bases overseas, and was then deployed to bases overseas, with nothing in between except four years at West Point, which wasn’t exactly known as a leisure-­heavy institution, then obviously such a guy was going to take a year to travel and see the sights before he settled down. Maybe two years. But not more. And not permanently. Face it. The pathology meter was twitching.

    All said with concern, and no judgment. No big deal. Just a two-­minute conversation. But the message was clear. As clear as such messages could be. Something about denial. He asked, denial of what? He didn’t secretly think his life was a problem.

    That proves it, she said.

    So he got on the bus to the end-­of-­the-­line place, and he would have ridden it all the way, because rules were rules, except he took a stroll at the second comfort stop, and he saw a ring in a pawn shop window.

    The second comfort stop came late in the day, and it was on the sad side of a small town. Possibly a seat of county government. Or some minor part of it. Maybe the county police department was headquartered there. There was a jail in town. That was clear. Reacher could see bail bond offices, and a pawn shop. Full service, right there, side by side on a run-­down street beyond the restroom block.

    He was stiff from sitting. He scanned the street beyond the restroom block. He started walking toward it. No real reason. Just strolling. Just loosening up. As he got closer he counted the guitars in the pawn shop window. Seven. Sad stories, all of them. Like the songs on country radio. Dreams, unfulfilled. Lower down in the window were glass shelves loaded with smaller stuff. All kinds of jewelry. Including rings. Including class rings. All kinds of high schools. Except one of them wasn’t. One of them was West Point 2005.

    It was a handsome ring. It was a conventional shape, and a conventional style, with intricate gold filigree,...
About the Author-
  • Lee Child is the author of twenty-two New York Times bestselling Jack Reacher thrillers, thirteen of which have having reached the #1 position, and the complete Jack Reacher story collection, No Middle Name. All his novels have been optioned for major motion pictures—including Jack Reacher (based on One Shot) and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in one hundred territories. A native of England and a former television director, Child lives in New York City.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from September 4, 2017
    Bestseller Child’s superlative 22nd Jack Reacher novel picks up where 2015’s Make Me left off. While riding a bus in Wisconsin to the next “end-of-the-line place,” Reacher gets off at a rest stop “on the sad side of a small town.” In a pawn shop window, he spots a West Point ring, class of 2005, sized for a small woman. As a West Pointer himself, Reacher knows what it takes to earn that ring—and he wants to find out who it belonged to and why it was pawned. The trail takes him to Rapid City, S.Dak., where he encounters shady Arthur Scorpio—ostensibly a laundromat owner, but of interest to local police and a private investigator from Chicago—and, eventually, to Wyoming. The identity of the ring’s owner is established reasonably quickly, and her backstory (and what Reacher does about it) takes the reader from the wars in Afghanistan to the opioid crisis in America (including a damning thumbnail history of how corporate America has profited from selling heroin in one form or another and a devastating portrait of opioid addiction). As usual, Child makes his narrative entirely credible—and compulsively readable. Agent: Darley Anderson, Darley Anderson Literary.

  • Kirkus

    September 15, 2017
    A glimpse of a West Point class ring in a pawn shop window sends Jack Reacher on his latest adventure in the 22nd entry in Child's (No Middle Name, 2017, etc.) series.On his latest travel to nowhere, Reacher, the peripatetic badass/guardian angel, steps off a bus at a rest stop and, while stretching his legs, glimpses a ring belonging to a female cadet. Knowing what it takes to earn that ring, especially for the women who still have to prove themselves to the military, Reacher buys it and, with nothing more than the initials inscribed inside to guide him, sets out to return to it to his fellow West Point alum. Of course it lands him in trouble, this time with a ring of opioid dealers, but at least he has a former FBI agent-turned-detective and the sister of the ring's owner for company. It's a good idea to give Reacher company since he plays well with others when they're on his side. How he plays badly with those who aren't is also part of the fun. So are the clever Sherlock-ian deductive skills that Reacher, a former Army investigator, puts to good use. Blessedly, there are none of the grisly moments that broke faith with readers in the series' last installment (Night School, 2016). And the book is very smart about illegal drugs, understanding that the face of the present crisis is largely white and rural and that the government's attempt to crack down on drugs ignores both the very real pleasure and the often necessary pain relief they bring to users, especially vets. The book makes a rather icky sentimental misstep toward the end. It does, however, suggest something that has not been visible in the series' previous entries: a creeping sadness in Reacher's wanderings that, set here among the vast and empty landscapes of Wyoming, resembles the peculiarly solitary loneliness of the classic American hero. This return to form is also a hint of new ground to be covered.

    COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Booklist

    September 15, 2017
    The softer side of Jack Reacher? Huh? Well, everything's relative, but this time out Reacher does far less head-butting than usual, and the action is scaled down several notches, too. It starts with the former MP turned off-the-grid wanderer strolling through a Wisconsin towncomfort break on his bus to nowherewhen he spots a ring in a pawn-shop windownot just any ring but a West Point class ring. West Pointers don't pawn class rings, so, naturally, Reacher wants to find out what happened. His attempts to trace the ring land him in the middle of an elaborate opioid-distribution operation originating in, of all places, a laundromat in South Dakota. Reacher tracks the ring's owner with relative ease, but that's where the trouble starts. Not so much with bad guysthough there are some of thosebut with an army major desperately in need of help. Showing his sensitive side and his usual shrewd ability to figure stuff out, Reacher proves the man for the job. Not your usual Reacher fareGod help us, we crave more head-bangingbut a very good, multifaceted novel about dealing with the unthinkable.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: It's automatic: Reacher gets off a bus, and Child lands on the NYT best-seller list.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

  • Library Journal

    Starred review from November 1, 2017

    In Child's latest Jack Reacher book (after Night School), his protagonist rambles into a Wisconsin pawnshop and notices a woman's 2005 West Point graduation ring. Knowing the effort a female cadet needed to earn the ring, he wonders: What motivated her to sell it? Reacher buys the ring, and after reading the initials inscribed inside, sets out to find his fellow alum. He quickly learns her name, Rose Sanderson; however, understanding her accomplishments requires more time. Along the way to the Wyoming wilderness and with the assistance of a former FBI agent and Rose's sister, he encounters musclemen, swindlers, bikers, and crooked cops who control a vast, illegal drug enterprise protecting opioid dealers and abusers as well as vets. Reacher also learns about the pains, sorrows, and fears Sanderson internalized while on duty in Iran and Afghanistan--and the residual effects she manages back home. Child places the present opioid crisis in context, which may help readers better understand drug use, especially among vets. VERDICT Child does a stellar job this time by not following his customary formula; his usually stoic hero who rarely displays softness and compassion is hit hard emotionally by this case. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]--Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA

    Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Library Journal

    June 1, 2017

    Spotting a woman's West Point class ring in a Wisconsin pawn shop, Jack Reacher understandably wonders what happened to her. That leads him into the great empty spaces of Wyoming, conflict with a nasty biker gang, and more. Child's recent Night School debuted at the top of the New York Times best sellers list.

    Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Library Journal

    November 1, 2017

    In Child's latest Jack Reacher book (after Night School), his protagonist rambles into a Wisconsin pawnshop and notices a woman's 2005 West Point graduation ring. Knowing the effort a female cadet needed to earn the ring, he wonders: What motivated her to sell it? Reacher buys the ring, and after reading the initials inscribed inside, sets out to find his fellow alum. He quickly learns her name, Rose Sanderson; however, understanding her accomplishments requires more time. Along the way to the Wyoming wilderness and with the assistance of a former FBI agent and Rose's sister, he encounters musclemen, swindlers, bikers, and crooked cops who control a vast, illegal drug enterprise protecting opioid dealers and abusers as well as vets. Reacher also learns about the pains, sorrows, and fears Sanderson internalized while on duty in Iran and Afghanistan--and the residual effects she manages back home. Child places the present opioid crisis in context, which may help readers better understand drug use, especially among vets. VERDICT Child does a stellar job this time by not following his customary formula; his usually stoic hero who rarely displays softness and compassion is hit hard emotionally by this case. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]--Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA

    Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from March 5, 2018
    In Child’s above-average 22nd Jack Reacher novel, the peripatetic soldier of fortune spies a woman’s West Point ring in a pawn shop in Wisconsin and decides to return it to its original owner. His mission is interrupted by confrontations with a smug drug-peddling mob boss, tough-talking but glass-jawed homicidal bikers, and a couple of steely-eyed hit men. Assisting Reacher are the ring owner’s worried sister, a tough private eye, and an ambitious policewoman. Keeping the same mildly cynical tone and unflagging pace he has used in previous series entries, reader Hill smoothly covers the moods of his heroes, from hard-boiled protagonist to sharp-witted investigator to empathic observer. He’s equally effective in providing the mobster an arrogant tone; slimy, rural, bullying accents for the bikers; the policewoman’s edgy air of anger and frustration; and a fearful,
    anxious flutter to the sister’s voice. He also assists Child with a sincerity that adds gravitas to the novel’s discussions of the opioid crisis. Child’s audiobook fans will not want to miss this one. A Delacorte hardcover.

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