Series no. | Title | ISBN | Date of publication | 1st/3rd person | Summary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Killing Floor | 0-515-12344-7 | March 1997 | 1st | Jack Reacher gets off a Greyhound bus in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia, because he remembers his brother mentioning that a blues musician named Blind Blake died there. Much to his surprise, shortly after his arrival, he is arrested in a local diner for murder. He must try to prove his innocence. - Though the first published novel, it is the fourth one in terms of the in-story chronology.[2] |
2 | Die Trying | 0-399-14379-3 | July 1998 | 3rd | Just as Reacher helps Holly Johnson, an attractive young woman struggling with her crutches on a Chicago street, they are both kidnapped at gunpoint. Reacher and the woman are thrown into a dark van and taken 2,000 miles across America, completely unaware why they were kidnapped and where they are going. Finding themselves trapped in a seemingly remote place, they must work together to find the answers. |
3 | Tripwire | 0-515-14307-3 | July 1999 | 3rd | Reacher is in Key West, digging pools by hand and moonlighting as a bouncer for a topless bar. He discovers the body of a New York investigator hired by 'Mrs. Jacob' to find him. He finds out that she is attorney Jodie Garber, daughter of General Leon Garber, Reacher's recently-deceased mentor and surrogate father in the Army. She wants his help investigating her father's last project, a search on behalf of the elderly parents of their military MIA son. Having inherited a house and gained a steady girlfriend, Reacher contemplates a sedentary life as he and Jodie find themselves hunted by a psychopath businessman and military criminal crippled in the Vietnam War, who has a shadowy business and other secrets to protect. |
4 | The Visitor (UK) Running Blind (US) | 978-0-515-14350-8 | April 2000 | 1st | Two women are found dead in their own homes—in baths filled with Army-issue camouflage paint, their bodies completely unmarked. Jack Reacher knew them, and he knows that they both left the Army under dubious circumstances, both victims of sexual harassment. Reacher is under suspicion and arrested; as a former US military policeman, a loner and a drifter, he matches the psychological criminal profile prepared by FBI Special Agent Julia Lamarr. When another woman is killed the same way while Reacher is under surveillance, he is released but pressured into helping the murder investigation. He has to find out what they have in common and why someone would kill more. |
5 | Echo Burning | 0-515-13331-0 | April 2001 | 3rd | Reacher hitches a ride in Texas. Carmen, the driver, is a mother of a young girl and is trapped in an abusive marriage.She requests Reacher's help. After some deliberation Reacher consents. However, at her remote ranch in Echo County Reacher encounters lies, prejudice and hatred climaxing in Carmen being arrested for the murder of her husband. With Carmen's true motives cast into doubt, Reacher finds himself investigating the truth. |
6 | Without Fail | 978-0-515-14431-4 | April 2002 | 3rd | Reacher arrives in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and is intercepted by Mary Ellen (M. E.) Froelich, a beautiful Secret Service agent. She has a special request: that Reacher tell her the various ways, were he an actual assassin, in which he could kill the Vice-President; being made aware of any such methods would help her considerably in tightening her security detail in order to protect the Vice-President's life. He accepts the challenge, enlisting old colleague Frances Neagley to help carry out the mission. Suspicious and threatening letters have been sent to the Vice-President and intercepted by his protective team. Together, they attempt to find those responsible. |
7 | Persuader | 978-0-440-24598-8 | April 2003 | 1st | Walking along the street, Reacher sees Quinn, a man who should be dead: dead as he was responsible for the murder of two of Reacher's colleagues ten years back. Now a chance encounter outside Boston's Symphony Hall shows Reacher that Francis Xavier Quinn got away with murder. Reacher teams up with the DEA to penetrate a smuggling ring in order to get back at Quinn. |
8 | The Enemy | 0-553-81585-7 | April 2004 | 1st | In-story, this novel is set first chronologically.[2] On New Year's Day, 1990, in a North Carolina motel, a two-star general is found dead, suspected to have suffered a heart attack while engaging in coitus with a prostitute. Within minutes, Reacher is ordered to contain the situation to prevent embarrassment to the US Army. But matters escalate when Reacher discovers the general's briefcase is missing and is tasked with recovering an important agenda present in it. |
9 | One Shot | 0-385-33668-3 | April 2005 | 3rd | In an innocent heartland city, five murders with six shots are done by an expert sniper. The police quickly identify and arrest a suspect, and build a slam-dunk case with iron-clad evidence. But the accused man claims he's innocent and says 'Get Jack Reacher.' Reacher himself sees the news report and turns up in the city. The defense is immensely relieved; but Reacher has come to bury the guy. Shocked by the request of the accused, Reacher sets out to confirm for himself the absolute certainty of the man's guilt, but comes up with more than he bargained for. This novel was adapted for the screen in 2012 as Jack Reacher, with Tom Cruise in the title role. |
10 | The Hard Way | 0-385-33669-1 | May 2006 | 3rd | After witnessing an exchange of $1,000,000. Jack Reacher is hired by the underhanded director of a private military company to rescue his wife and stepchild, who appear to have been kidnapped. Reacher, enlisting the help of an ex-FBI private investigator, uncovers clues that might lead to a rescue, learning about the director's mysterious past in the process. The investigation leads him to the truth, and ultimately engage in a gun battle on a farm in Norfolk, England. The novel is set primarily in New York City. |
11 | Bad Luck and Trouble | 0-385-34055-9 | April 2007 | 3rd | When someone makes a small anonymous deposit into Reacher's bank account, it triggers his fixation for math and his investigative instincts. Reacher deduces that the deposit is a signal only the eight former members of his elite team of army investigators would use. Obsessed with math like Reacher, Frances Neagley locates him because of the brutal death of one of their own. They race to reunite with the survivors of their old team and raise the living, bury the dead, and connect the dots in a mystery that grows more complex with more murders. With the lives of those Reacher considers family at stake, his usual emotionless demeanor breaks and he says of the killers, 'They are dead men walking.' The team falls into their old roles and routines with ease, their motto still their sacred rule: You do not mess with the Special Investigators. |
12 | Nothing to Lose | 978-059-305702-5 | March 2008 | 3rd | Traveling from the town of Hope, Colorado to the neighboring town of Despair, Reacher finds that he is an unwelcome visitor, which fuels his curiosity. Reacher decides to investigate the mystery behind the town's unwelcoming disposition towards visitors, unraveling in the process the secrets of Thurman, a powerful businessman who has employed the majority of the population of Despair to work in his recycling factory. |
13 | Gone Tomorrow | 978-0-440-24368-7 | April 2009 | 1st | During a late night subway ride, Reacher becomes troubled by one of his fellow passengers. Checking against his mental list for suicide bombers, he comes to the conclusion that the fifth is one. He is puzzled with her choice of timing and place, as it is not crowded; on the contrary the subway was exceedingly empty. He reasons with her, but she shoots herself; thereby proving Reacher wrong when he concluded she was a bomber. His determination to discover why she killed herself forms the plot of the story. |
14 | 61 Hours | 978-0-440-24369-4 | March 2010 | 3rd | In South Dakota, a tourist bus crashes during a savage snow storm with Jack Reacher in it. Reacher gets caught up in a hunt for a murderer and the protection of a key witness. |
15 | Worth Dying For | 978-0-385-34431-9 | September 2010 | 3rd | Reacher arrives late one night in a rural Nebraska town. In the town's fading motel bar he overhears a drunk doctor's refusal to attend a victim of domestic abuse. Reacher intervenes, getting the doctor to attend to the victim while breaking the nose of the husband responsible for the abuse. It turns out that the husband is the scion of the powerful and rich Duncan clan, which maintains authority in that part of Nebraska. Reacher's intervention causes him to end up embroiled in a smuggling ring and an unsolved disappearance from twenty-five years prior. |
16 | The Affair | 978-0-440-24630-5 | 27 September 2011 | 1st | March 1997. Six months before the events of Killing Floor. Jack Reacher is still in the army, and there is big trouble in a small town in Mississippi, where a soldier's girlfriend is found with her throat cut from ear to ear. Reacher must determine whether the killer is local, or from nearby Fort Kelham, a large base used by elite Army Rangers. Reacher's orders are to go undercover, keep his distance, and monitor the investigation. The army's official investigation and Reacher's undercover search point to different suspects, which puts pressure on Reacher, who must decide whether to speak out. This is the third novel chronologically.[2] |
17 | A Wanted Man | 978-0-440-24631-2 | 11 September 2012 | 3rd | In order to get to Virginia, Reacher hitches a ride from a group of three—two men and a woman. An hour behind them, the FBI descends on an old pumping station where a man was stabbed to death—the knife work professional, the killers nowhere to be seen. At the same time Reacher discovers the woman appears to be kidnapped and that the two men are the kidnappers. Reacher now finds himself tied to a volatile situation and it is up to him to try and defuse it. |
18 | Never Go Back | 978-0-593-06574-7 | 3 September 2013 | 3rd | Culminating the story arc extending from 61 Hours, Reacher makes it to his destination in northeastern Virginia: the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP. On arriving though, Reacher finds out that the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner, has been arrested. Soon he too finds himself taken into custody, pending the trail of two crimes he allegedly committed while he was in the army. Reacher and Turner set out on a journey; Turner in hopes of clearing her name and Reacher to prove the charges fraudulent or if true then atone for them. This novel was adapted for the screen in 2016 as Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, with Tom Cruise reprising the title role. |
19 | Personal | 978-0-5930-7382-7 | 28 August 2014 | 1st | Reacher is tasked with finding out the person responsible for taking a long distance shot at the French President, one of the suspects being a man Reacher tracked down once and put in jail sixteen years back for murder. |
20 | Make Me | 978-0-8041-7877-8 | 8 September 2015 | 3rd | Reacher makes a stop in an agrarian town called Mother's Rest. There a woman, Michelle Chang, enlists his help to find a missing colleague. |
21 | Night School | 0804178801 | 8 November 2016 | 3rd | Early 1996 finds Reacher, still in the army and fresh off a successful mission, placed into a top-secret multi-agency task force. A CIA informant in a Jihadist sleeper cell in Hamburg, Germany, has relayed the message 'The American wants a hundred million dollars'. With little else to go on, Reacher and his new associates are tasked with finding the buyer and the seller and determining what is being sold. Along with his longtime righthand-woman Sergeant Frances Neagley, Reacher heads to recently reunified Germany to get to the heart of the matter, and he quickly finds himself skirting neo-Nazi elements as he pursues the Middle-Eastern terrorists and the American traitor. This is the second novel chronologically.[2] |
22 | The Midnight Line | 978-0-3995-9348-2 | 7 November 2017 | 3rd | This story follows the novella 'Too Much Time' that is included in the collection of short stories in No Middle Name Released in May 2017. Jack Reacher sees a West Point Graduation ring in a pawn shop and buys it, determined to restore it to its original owner. He supposes the owner had some financial problems that caused the pawn sale, because nobody who earned it at West Point would willingly part with it unless they faced necessity. |
23 | Past Tense | 978-0-399-59351-2 | 5 November 2018 | 3rd | Jack Reacher takes a detour to Laconia, NH, to visit his father's hometown. During his visit he learns about his father's past and helps a couple who stumble into a motel that turns out to be dangerous. |
Wettington was given a citation for helping to break up an illegal drug ring operating out of the Sixty-seventh Combat Support Hospital in Würzburg, Germany, and was personally recommended by a man named Jack Reacher, the toughest goddam Army cop that ever served, in my humble opinion.
When Joseph Finder decided to try a series character, he took many cues from Lee Child’s Jack Reacher.