Book Review: Better Off Dead

No, it’s not the giant of a man who punches harder than Jack Reacher who is his most formidable foe in Lee Child and Andrew Child’s 2021 novel, Better Off Dead. That distinction belongs to the little device in our pockets: the smartphone. I jest in what is the 26th novel in the Jack Reacher series, but it is interesting how they play Reacher as a stranger in a strange land in 2021, and to be fair, he was always something of a stranger in a strange land prior to the arrival of the smartphone. After all, he was a minimalist hitchhiking his way through America with not much of a rhyme or reason about where he ends up.

But one thing that is guaranteed is that wherever Reacher ends up — and in the case of Better Off Dead, it’s a border town in California, buoyed by the federal government in the 1930s and hollowed out ever since and used to the advantage of a French terrorist, Dendoncker — he is sure to find himself embroiled in something he simply can’t walk away from. Here, he can’t walk away from a twin sister searching for her missing brother. The brother is caught up with Dendoncker, and Dendoncker only shows himself when inspecting the corpses of people who cross him. So, as the title hints with a clever little opening, Reacher and the twin sister concoct a scheme where Reacher will play dead (after being “shot” by her) to lure Dendoncker out and thus, find the whereabouts of the brother.

That’s where the book starts. Usually with Reacher books, there is at least some simmering build up to whatever nefariousness that’s afoot in the small town in which Reacher finds himself, but in Better Off Dead, we’re off to the races fairly quickly and the pace doesn’t much let up. To up the stakes, of course, and keep the plotting going, Dendoncker has a grander scheme to frame a different terrorist for the bombing he plans to carry out with the brother’s help (he has expertise in bomb-making). Some Reacher novels are more intimate in the scope of the threat and some can be more far-reaching with potential implications; in this case, if Dendoncker’s scheme had worked and not been foiled by Reacher, it would have killed hundreds, perhaps even thousands, many of whom were federal agents with the explicit job of tracking down terrorists. (Fun fact: That agency, the Terrorist Explosive Devise Analytical Center, or TEDAC, is a real agency located in Huntsville, Alabama.)

I love Reacher. That’s the minimalist version of my review of any Reacher book. I love being in Reacher’s head when he’s assessing how to pummel his adversaries, and the absolute confidence he possesses while doing so. Or when he’s trying to solve a problem he hasn’t quite figured out yet. And I have to reiterate what I did with the prior Reacher book, The Sentinel, that while I don’t know how much of the books are wholly written by Andrew Child now, these are books are 100 percent Reacher, and any fan of Reacher, like me, can still happily eat them up like Reacher in a small diner somewhere with a burger and a steaming cup of coffee.

I also think an advantage this one has over The Sentinel and a few other Reacher novels is that Better Off Dead starts with one of the more unique openings in the Reacher series and then moves at a faster clip than many of them do. We didn’t even slow down enough for Reacher to “get the girl,” as he often does! He barely even slept or showered (I don’t think he did the latter actually). It was movement, planning, searching, fighting, and uncovering the wider plot.

For my fellow Reacher fans, you can feel confident going into this one with as much anticipation and expecting as much Reacher fun as usual. Better Off Dead delivers the goods.