Review of Night School by Lee Child

Some people never know Jack Reacher until they see Tom Cruise portraying him. Some others are already familiar with Lee Child’s vagrant character since he conceives him amidst his bankruptcy. For both, Night School is a truly entertaining novel to read.

Source : Amazon.com

Night School is the twenty first novel in Jack Reacher series, released approximately one year after Make Me. In this novel, Jack Reacher is tasked to reveal the identity of an American with some unknown thing that Arab terrorists are willing to pay $100 million for and to interrupt the deal the American is involved in.

Jack Reacher is not alone. The first time he is made aware of the deal is when he is in the night school—hence the novel name—with two other mates, which are later known to be CIA and FBI agents respectively. Jack Reacher hears about the deal after an undercover CIA agent overhears it and reports the information he obtains. Reacher later collaborates with his old friend, Sergeant Frances Neagley, whom every reader of Jack Reacher series is already familiar with. Together with her, Jack Reacher attempts to solve the puzzles obfuscating the deal as well as the identity of everyone involved in it, including the suspected American. There are a lot of twists involved in the story and just like Reacher’s previous missions, this one will also not be easy to accomplish.

The focus of the novel lies on Jack Reacher’s character, which, as Lee describes, characterizes a lone ranger with his strong sense of justice and ingenuity in solving problems. The character indeed has his own problems and weaknesses, but Lee has made him so confident that self-pity and defeatism are not among his traits. Just like in previous novels in the series, in Night School, Jack Reacher’s capability is reasonable enough to be compared with that of a superhero without superhero’s unearthly powers.

The plot is set in Hamburg, Germany, in 1995, when the heat of the downing of the Berlin Wall, the post-Soviet-era volatility, and the re-emergence of neo-Nazism, became common themes. Later in the story, similarly inauspicious and even hostile places like CIA headquarters and Jalalabad become the hosts of some of the most suspenseful episodes of the story. Schemes, deceptions and backstabbing become common themes found in the story, making it one of the greatest Jack Reacher’s stories that fans of the series will certainly adore.

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