The Secret

A Jack Reacher Novel

By: Lee Child, Andrew Child

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Don’t miss the hit streaming series Reacher!

A string of mysterious deaths. A long-classified mission. A young MP with nothing to lose.

1992. All across the United States respectable, upstanding citizens are showing up dead. These deaths could be accidents, and they don’t appear to be connected—until a fatal fall from a high-floor window attracts some unexpected attention.

That attention comes from the secretary of defense. All of a sudden he wants an interagency task force to investigate. And he wants Jack Reacher as the army’s representative. If Reacher gets a result, great. If not, he’s a convenient fall guy.

But office politics isn’t Reacher’s thing. Three questions quickly emerge: Who’s with him, who’s against him, and will the justice he dispenses be the official kind . . . or his own kind?

©2023 Lee Child and Andrew Child (P)2023 Random House Audio

NOT WORTH YOUR TIME

Without Scott Brick’s excellent narration, I would not have listened to this entire audiobook. Andrew Child (although I’m sure he’s a really nice person) does not have the writing skills of his brother, Lee, and it really shows in this book: a group of highly trained officers tasked with arresting a female suspect were portrayed like the Keystone Kops (without the humor and with less common sense), and two females suspects were written as near demigods. Not worth the time and money.

Who wrote this?

This was the oddest Jack Reacher book ever. I didn’t even recognize the character. I wadted a credit.

Disappointing

Big Reacher fan.
Not up to standard of previous novels. Narrator very good.
Story, unremarkable

Too predictable

Jack Reacher is my superhero. And his performance is as espected in this novel.
It starts off with a story where the younger MP Reacher figurens brilliantly out how and why weapens are tampeted with. When that issue is out of the way, he is reassigned to a tasksforce with other agencies, trying to stop the killings of retired scientist.
When reading a Jack Reacher novel, you have expectations. Typically Reacher will have to face a formidable enemy to hjelp and protect someone weaker. This novel has the elements, but the story seems too predictable. It is ok, but just that.
Hopefully Reacher will be back in present time and on a bus somewhere in the next novel.

Great book

The brothers make a good team. I like that the story is set back in Reacher’s military days. His lonely, isolated days on the road as a do-gooder tramp were too isolated and kind of depressing. This is much more interesting.

Dull story, pale in comparison with previous novels

Scott Brick was excellent, but the novel itself was quite dull. Poor version of a Reacher novel

This is not a Jack Teacher novel

this is more of a story with Jack reacher as a character plus Scott brick is a terrible narrator he has two inflections that's his normal voice and he's pissed off voice very hard to keep the character straight.
the whole narrative and cadence of the story is off it is not a Jack reacher novel.

True Jack Reacher

A True Jack Reacher book it’s Reacher entertaining from the very beginning and until the last sentence
👍👍👍👍👍

Did not enjoy the narrator

Not sure if it was the plot or narrator, but I found it hard to maintain an interest in the story.

Reacher has changed

I thought the performance of the reader was a bit over-melodramatic. A little of over acting.

The story in the characters followed some of the same old formula, but overall it seemed the old heart has gone out of it. Reacher always appealed to me because he was an idealist, despite everything he had seen and done. He had moral clarity. This was darker, even though it was set in a time when reacher was still in the army. Just might have felt different. If it had been set in his later years, with some additional context and mileage on his attitudes, and I found myself wondering about why that element had crept in. Perhaps it was the new co-author having an influence there. These are darker times, too, but not necessarily when the story takes place., where everything is under suspicion, even people we would have once assumed the best of. this had more of a cynical feel, for a more cynical time. Just reminded me again of what we’ve lost, and that is too bad.