No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Stories

A collection of 12 Reacher short stories; the first 6 are around 50 pages the remainder are far shorter. I very much enjoyed reading the stories especially the early ones that introduce us to Reacher as an adolescent. I've read everything that Lee Child has written in the Jack Reacher series - this book stands well alongside the full length stories. Highly recommended.

These stories are a mixed bag for me. A few are very good - like the opening "Too much time", but many I just felt were either absurd or throwaway. Examples of these being "High Heat" (absurd), "James Penney..." and "No Room at Motel" (throwaway).In High Heat a 16 year Reacher takes on a Mafia type boss, and shows a female federal agent how to do her job. All utterly ludicrous. In James Penney... Reacher only appears (spoiler alert) at the very end of the story. To be honest I thought Lee Child had forgotten he was writing a Reacher story.I enjoyed them all up to a point, even the rubbish ones, which says something about the iconic character Child has created. So although overall IMO it's not a great collection, I have to admit they were easy to read, and in places a lot of fun.

Time to 'fess up: I like Jack Reacher books, and I don't like short stories. So to enjoy this so much was a revelation. I think it's Jim's short punchy sentences which fit well within the paradigm of the short story. Plus the fact that there's no massive story arc in a Reacher story - he breezes in, solves a puzzle (usually this involves beating people up), packs his portable toothbrush (the only annoying re-occurring theme in the books), and then moves on, regardless of whether he's pulled or not during the course of the story. My favourite story is young Reacher and his brother, because I always felt sorry for his brother (spoiler alert) getting bumped off in the first novel without us getting introduced to him.

I had ordered a few books and this one came with one other, unfortunately whoever had packaged it had folded the cardboard flap of the packaging in between some of the pages so it has bent some of the pages. Got it under a heavy weight now to hopefully straighten these out as it is for a present. I have read all of these stories on my e-reader but my father doesn't have an e-reader so when I saw they had them in an actual book I bought it for him, he's getting through a lot of books in lockdown! I've enjoyed all the stories, nice to have a bit of history to Reacher.

Didn’t wat to put it down once I started reading it, kept me captivated all the way through.