high heat

high heat
jack reacher
lee child #17.5
fiction/novella/crime
delacorte press
published 2013

July 1977.  Jack Reacher is almost seventeen, and he stops in New York City on the way to visit his brother at West Point.  The summer heat is suffocating, the city is bankrupt, and the mad gunman known as Sam is still on the loose.  Reacher meets a woman with a problem and agrees to help her....but then the power grid fails and the lights go out, plunging the lawless city into chaos.  What does a visiting teenager do in the dark?  If that visiting teenager is Jack Reacher, the answer is plenty.

An interesting little snippet into Reacher's life more than 30 years ago.  There is absolutely no reason to write these stories about him as a teenager, except, I think to insert such events as the terror that David Berkowitz caused in the 70's.  I say this because there is no difference between him as a 16 year old and him as a 46 year old.  You would never think that you were in the mind of a 16 year old because he think exactly like he does as an adult.  He's basically the same size as he is now so even that isn't different.

Of course, that's not to say that this isn't a fun Reacher read.  He's coming to the rescue and the results are....surprising.  I was a little disappointed in the ending, but it is what it is.  Reacher's not really known for his happy endings, right?