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The Sentinel
Cover of The Sentinel
The Sentinel
by Lee Child
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Don’t miss the hit streaming series Reacher
Jack Reacher is back! The “utterly addictive” (The New York Times) series continues as acclaimed author Lee Child teams up with his brother, Andrew Child, fellow thriller writer extraordinaire.

“One of the many great things about Jack Reacher is that he’s larger than life while remaining relatable and believable. The Sentinel shows that two Childs are even better than one.”—James Patterson

As always, Reacher has no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. One morning he ends up in a town near Pleasantville, Tennessee.
But there’s nothing pleasant about the place.
In broad daylight Reacher spots a hapless soul walking into an ambush. “It was four against one” . . . so Reacher intervenes, with his own trademark brand of conflict resolution.
The man he saves is Rusty Rutherford, an unassuming IT manager, recently fired after a cyberattack locked up the town’s data, records, information . . . and secrets. Rutherford wants to stay put, look innocent, and clear his name.
Reacher is intrigued. There’s more to the story. The bad guys who jumped Rutherford are part of something serious and deadly, involving a conspiracy, a cover-up, and murder—all centered on a mousy little guy in a coffee-stained shirt who has no idea what he’s up against.
Rule one: if you don’t know the trouble you’re in, keep Reacher by your side.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Don’t miss the hit streaming series Reacher
Jack Reacher is back! The “utterly addictive” (The New York Times) series continues as acclaimed author Lee Child teams up with his brother, Andrew Child, fellow thriller writer extraordinaire.

“One of the many great things about Jack Reacher is that he’s larger than life while remaining relatable and believable. The Sentinel shows that two Childs are even better than one.”—James Patterson

As always, Reacher has no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. One morning he ends up in a town near Pleasantville, Tennessee.
But there’s nothing pleasant about the place.
In broad daylight Reacher spots a hapless soul walking into an ambush. “It was four against one” . . . so Reacher intervenes, with his own trademark brand of conflict resolution.
The man he saves is Rusty Rutherford, an unassuming IT manager, recently fired after a cyberattack locked up the town’s data, records, information . . . and secrets. Rutherford wants to stay put, look innocent, and clear his name.
Reacher is intrigued. There’s more to the story. The bad guys who jumped Rutherford are part of something serious and deadly, involving a conspiracy, a cover-up, and murder—all centered on a mousy little guy in a coffee-stained shirt who has no idea what he’s up against.
Rule one: if you don’t know the trouble you’re in, keep Reacher by your side.
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Excerpts-
  • From the book Chapter 1

    Rusty Rutherford emerged from his apartment on a Monday morning, exactly one week after he got fired.

    He spent the first few days after the ax fell with his blinds drawn, working through his stockpile of frozen pizzas and waiting for the phone to ring. Significant weaknesses, the dismissal letter said. Profound failure of leadership. Basic and fundamental errors. It was unbelievable. Such a distortion of the truth. And so unfair. They were actually trying to pin the town’s recent problems on him. It was . . . a mistake. Plain and simple. Which meant it was certain to be corrected. And soon.

    The hours crawled past. His phone stayed silent. And his personal email silted up with nothing more than spam.

    He resisted for another full day, then grabbed his old laptop and powered it up. He didn’t own a gun or a knife. He didn’t know how to rappel from a helicopter or parachute from a plane. But still, someone had to pay. Maybe his real-­life enemies were going to get away with it. This time. But not the villains in the videogames a developer buddy had sent him. He had shied away from playing them, before. The violence felt too extreme. Too unnecessary. It didn’t feel that way anymore. His days of showing mercy were over. Unless . . .

    His phone stayed silent.

    Twenty-­four hours later he had a slew of new high scores and a mild case of dehydration, but not much else had changed. He closed the computer and slumped back on his couch. He stayed there for the best part of another day, picking at random from a stack of blu rays he didn’t remember buying and silently begging the universe to send him back to work. He would be different, he swore. Easier to get along with. More patient. Diplomatic. Empathetic, even. He would buy donuts for everyone in the office. Twice a month. Three times, if that would seal the deal . . .

    His phone stayed silent.

    He didn’t often drink, but what else was there left to do? The credits began to roll at the end of another disk. He couldn’t stomach another movie so he retreated to the kitchen. Retrieved an unopened bottle of Jim Beam from the back of a cabinet. Returned to the living room and put a scratchy old Elmore James LP on the turntable.

    He wound up asleep, facedown on the floor, after—­he wasn’t sure how long. All he knew was that when he woke up his head felt like it was crammed full of rocks, shifting and grinding as if they were trying to burst out of his skull. He thought the pain would never end. But when his hangover did finally pass he found himself experiencing a new emotion. Defiance. He was an innocent man, after all. None of the bad things that had happened were his fault. That was for damn sure. He was the one who’d foreseen them. Who’d warned his boss about them. Time after time. In public and in private. And who’d been ignored. Time after time. So after seven days holed up alone, Rutherford decided it was time to show his face. To tell his side of the story. To anyone who would listen.

    He took a shower and dug some clothes out of his closet. Chinos and a polo shirt. Brand new. Somber colors, with logos, to show he meant business. Then he retrieved his shoes from the opposite corners of the hallway where he’d flung them. Scooped up his keys and sunglasses from the bookcase by the door. Stepped out into the corridor. Rode down in the elevator, alone. Crossed the lobby. Pushed through the heavy revolving door and paused on the sidewalk. The mid-­morning sun felt like a blast furnace and its sudden heat drew beads of sweat...
About the Author-
  • Lee Child is the author of more than two dozen New York Times bestselling Jack Reacher thrillers, with most having reached the #1 position, and the #1 bestselling complete Jack Reacher story collection, No Middle Name. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in one hundred territories. A native of England and a former television director, Lee Child lives in New York City and Wyoming.
    Andrew Child, who also writes as Andrew Grant, is the author of RUN, False Positive, False Friend, False Witness, Invisible, and Too Close to Home. Child and his wife, the novelist Tasha Alexander, live on a wildlife preserve in Wyoming.
Reviews-
  • Library Journal

    May 1, 2020

    As well you know, Lee Child has announced that he will relinquish his celebrated "Jack Reacher" series to brother Andrew Grant (e.g., False Positive), who will go by the pen name Andrew Child. They'll write the next few titles together before Andrew leaps wholly into the fray.

    Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Publisher's Weekly

    September 28, 2020
    Ironically, it took an English author to realize the dramatic possibilities of modernizing the wandering gunfighter of American frontier stories. Starting in 1997 with Killing Floor, Lee Child introduced Jack Reacher, a former military policeman with a fascination for blues music and prime numbers, a Luddite with a highly developed limbic brain and a compulsion to wander the United States, walking, hitchhiking, or traveling by bus, carrying only cash, a toothbrush, and his passport. He doesn’t look for trouble, but he certainly doesn’t walk away from it. And one more distinctive element: his appearance. “He was six feet five. 250 pounds. His hair was a disheveled mess. He was unshaved. Children had been known to run screaming at the sight of him.”, Most of the Reacher books have been #1 bestsellers. What makes this new Reacher novel (the 25th) a special publishing event is that the series now has a cowriter, Andrew Child, who also writes as Andrew Grant (Too Close to Home) and is Lee Child’s younger brother. Booksellers and Reacher fans might wonder if anything has changed. A line from The Sentinel will reassure them that nothing has changed. “Someone had sent six guys after . It would be wrong to let the day end with only two of them in the hospital.”
    This time, Reacher arrives in a town near Nashville, where he heads toward one of his favorite destinations, a coffee shop, only to notice that someone is about to be abducted. Reacher being Reacher, he saves the stranger and ends up confronting a conspiracy involving cyber ransom, election sabotage, a Cold War secret, and... enough to say that plenty is happening., Much of The Sentinel is humorous as Reacher patiently teaches bad guys about the flaws in their tactics. While there’s lots of action, the novel also feels like a procedural as Reacher interviews suspects and delves deeper toward the truth. On occasion, almost subliminal references to Reacher’s background, especially his mother’s harsh childhood in France during WWII, suggest a motive for his increasing anger toward the people he’s hunting. In the last 50 pages, that anger intensifies, with Reacher battling numerous enemies in the many levels of an underground complex—one of the most inventive action sequences in recent memory., Apart from some timely plot elements (the title refers to a software program designed to prevent election fraud, for example), this new Reacher novel could have been published earlier. It continues the series without any sense that there’s now a coauthor. In a year of drastic change, fans will welcome the consistency. (Oct.), David Morrell is the bestselling author of First Blood and Murder as a Fine Art.

  • Booklist

    Starred review from October 15, 2020
    If we assume the Jack Reacher novels follow a strictly accurate chronology, then the former military cop turns 60 this year. His creator, Lee Child, turns 66, which may help to explain why Child has enlisted his younger brother, novelist Andrew Grant, as his coauthor and eventual inheritor of the Reacher series: Lee Child (real name: James Grant) wants to retire. But he doesn't want Jack to retire. The Sentinel is the first novel credited to Child and Grant, and?prepare to let out a big breath?it's terrific. Sure, the writing style is ever-so-slightly different (Child's writing is terser than Child and Grant's), but the story is just as powerful. A man is wrongly accused of setting in motion events that proved catastrophic to a Tennessee town; a group of villains are intensely interested in getting their hands on the man, although their reasons are vaguely defined at the outset. Reacher wanders into the middle of it all and winds up risking his life to save another's. Brutal action mixes with keen-eyed detective work as Reacher metes out his own brand of justice. It's always a risk when someone who has written a series since its beginning turns over the reins to a new writer, but if this novel is a harbinger of what's to come, then Jack is in good hands.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Jack Reacher fans' concern about Lee Child's decision to bow out of the series proves unwarranted in this terrific first Reacher novel coauthored by both Child and his brother, Andrew Grant.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

  • Kirkus

    December 1, 2020
    Brothers Lee and Andrew Child collaborate on this fast-paced thriller, 25th in the Jack Reacher series. Reacher forces a bar manager to pay two Nashville musicians being cheated out of their night's pay. You don't mess with Reacher, an ex-Army MP who is 6-feet-5 and 250 pounds, but if you try to hurt someone he'll mess with you. So when he witnesses bad guys (who turn out to be Russians) trying to kidnap a man, Reacher comes to the rescue. Said rescuee is Rusty Rutherford, who has been unjustly fired from his job as a nearby town's IT manager. Locally, everyone hates Rusty because of a disaster with the town's computers. But Reacher goes to great lengths to protect him. A police officer asks, "Why do you care so much about Rusty Rutherford? No one else does." Turns out he may have "something a certain foreign power is desperate to get its hands on." Someone is "specifically trying to erode faith in the election system itself." (Well, that's a ridiculous premise--who would ever mess with American elections?) Reacher is a most entertaining character: His "default was to move extremely slow or extremely fast," and in this Tennessee town he does lots of the latter. He needs to, with guys like Denisov, a Russian interrogator who has the "ability to loosen tongues. And bowels." Smart but not especially deep, Reacher is decidedly low-tech, unfamiliar with computers or cellphones. And of course he's a larger-than-life fighter who can really give evildoers what they deserve. Other than that, he sees a problem, fixes it, and moves on. The story's style is crisp, sometimes too much so. Plenty of short sentences. Like this. And it can grate. Or maybe it's great. You decide. The plot, the pace, and the punches will keep Child fans satisfied. Reach for this one.

    COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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