The Sentinel

By Lee Child and Andrew Child, Dell paperback, 2021, 464 pages
Reviewed by Tom Vogt, November 16, 2021

Jack Reacher exemplifies justice porn.

Only five words there, but I wondered whether that brief summary might disqualify this review.

No problem with "exemplifies" and "justice." But I was unsure about offering a Jack Reacher thriller to our community of readers. I also wondered about using the word "porn" in connection with any creative work that does not come with an X rating.

A couple of Washington Post columnists helped me resolve both issues. As 2020 came to a close, the Post asked its opinion writers to list some pop-culture works that helped them get through a tough year. For political columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., it included binge-reading the Jack Reacher series created by Lee Child.

And that other word? I got some support from WaPo television critic Inkoo Kang. In a recent review of Emmy-winning "Ted Lasso," she described the heart-warming series as "kindness porn." (People also might have encountered "food porn," in which glamorized photographs of food can actually get the saliva flowing.)

Child's writing can generate a different visceral response. Your mouth doesn't water; your heart doesn't warm. But your blood might boil, because each book features an irredeemably evil villain who deserves a brutal beat-down. And that's what Jack Reacher has been providing since 1997.

The 25th annual entry in the series, "The Sentinel" follows a familiar path. Reacher, a former military police investigator, is seeing the country at his leisure. He usually travels by bus or by thumbing a ride, since he doesn't own a car. But he does possess preternatural cop instincts that enable him to sense criminal intent on a big-city sidewalk or a small-town diner or a truck-stop coffee shop. (Reacher drinks a LOT of coffee.)

The crimes include familiar felonies (counterfeiting, loan-sharking, revenge killing) as well as next-gen nastiness like pay-per-view torture on the dark web. A ransomware attack provides the plot for "The Sentinel." The victim is a municipal IT guy who is being blamed for his city's computer shutdown. Reacher is there to set things right.

At 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds, he can deliver justice face-to-face ... and fist-to-face. As a superbly trained soldier, he can also bang down the gavel of righteousness with a pistol or a nuclear device.

Fleshing out his bio, Reacher was an Army major until the military cut him loose in a period of downsizing. It's a lot like what happened to Child, who encountered an unexpected career change of his own. He grew up in England and had an 18-year career with Granada Television. Under his real name, Jim Grant, he was part of British television classics, including "The Jewel in the Crown" and the "Sherlock Holmes" series that starred Jeremy Brett. After he was fired in a corporate reorganization, Child decided to try his luck as a writer.

I had a chance to interview Child for The (Vancouver, Wash.) Columbian newspaper a few years ago, and he contrasted the two story-telling formats.

Working on a TV show and writing novels "seem related, but they're really unrelated," Child said. In television, "The audience is very large, the reaction is very swift, and you very quickly learn about keeping the audience happy. TV is all teamwork all the time. It's fun because you're surrounded by fun people. But if it's a great show, you can't take the credit because 100 other people were involved.

"I love the immediacy of writing" a novel, he said. "Me and the reader: two people connected for 48 hours."

"The Sentinel" marks another career transition for Child. He co-wrote it with his brother, Andrew Grant, who also adopted the "Child" pen name. The partnership continues with No. 26 in the Reacher series. "Better Off Dead" was released a couple of weeks ago.

If his younger brother takes over franchise, Lee Child would end his 26-year relationship with Jack Reacher. Looking back at my Columbian story, that prospect didn't seem to bother the author. Child and Reacher are not as tight as you might expect.

"You have got to keep a distance" from your creation, he said in that 2015 phone interview. "If you start getting too close to the character, the whole thing falls apart. It gets too sugary, too defensive."

Child said he has a rule for defining his relationship with Reacher: "I want to like him less than you're going to like him."

And his fans really like him. I have reserved "Better Off Dead" at our local library, but given the number of people ahead of me on the hold list, I won't be reading it for a while.

Two years ago, I took our grandson to the weekly story-time session at our local library. As we headed to the kids' section, I glanced at the Lucky Day shelf, where best-sellers and high-demand books are available on a first-come basis. And there it was: "Blue Moon," the 2019 Reacher novel that had been published a few weeks earlier!

When I was able to hustle back to the Lucky Day shelf for that book, I was too late. A woman about my age had "Blue Moon" in her hand. "Got it!" she said with a smile. So, Jack Reacher isn't a hero for everyone, but his fan base is wider than I expected