No Plan B by Lee Child and Andrew Child

Published by Delacorte Press on October 25, 2022

How do you know a Reacher novel was written by the son rather than the father? The sentence “That was for sure” appears multiple times when Andrew Child writes the novel. I doubt that’s a sentence his father would ever use. And while Andrew tries to emulate his father’s style — sentence fragments, lots of “Maybe this. Maybe that.” — Lee Child builds a natural rhythm into the prose that his son fails to capture.

No Plan B gives the reader a main plot and two subplots. The main plot involves a private prison in Mississippi and a ship that mysteriously lurks just out outside US territorial waters. The prison is about to release an innocent inmate with great fanfare as proof of its respect for justice and civil rights. The corporate executives who run the prison are worried that Reacher will disturb the ceremony after they learn that Reacher witnessed a murder in Colorado. Before the murderers made their escape, Reacher glimpsed the contents of an envelope that relate to the mysterious crimes for which the prison is a front.

Reacher decides he will travel to Mississippi to right whatever murder-related wrongs he can uncover. A woman who was close to the vicim of a second, seemingly related murder decides to drive Reacher to Mississippi. Watchful prison employees are staged along likely travel routes in anticipation of Reacher’s arrival, but the reader knows that Reacher will defeat them all, usually with a single punch.

The first subplot involves a kid whose evil foster parents neglect him. He runs away. Naturally, his destination is the prison. Naturally, he will encounter Reacher as he travels, but only after proving that he’s a plucky kid who can survive the theft of his backpack and money. No novel featuring a kid at a bus terminal would be complete without an attempt to kidnap the kid and sell him into slavery. Trite much?

The second subplot features a guy named Emerson who is seeking revenge for his son’s death. The death connects to the prison, although Emerson isn’t aware of that connection until he burns a couple of people alive while searching for someone to hold responsible for his son’s fate. The subplot feels like filler, added only to satisfy the need for a second subplot and gratuitous gore. The reader is evidently not meant to feel sympathy for Emerson because his methods are too extreme. Reacher comes close to crossing the extremist line, although he can usually claim he’s acting in self-defense when he maims or kills the bad guys. Well, except for the bad guy he kills for no good reason near the end of the novel. This is shortly before he tells another character, “I’m not going to kill anyone in cold blood.” Yeah, not unless he’s in a killing mood, anyway.

The message of certain tough guy novels is that size and strength are more important than moral courage. Reacher novels have always flirted with that message, but Andrew brings it to the forefront.

The mysterious criminal scheme operated from the prison is common in thrillers but almost never occurs in the real world. It’s a fallback for writers who can’t devise an original crime. The notion that a major corporation would operate the scheme undetected, even in the cesspool of corruption that is Mississippi, is just too nonsensical to work as a credible thriller plot.

Reacher needs to break into and out of a prison as the story winds down. His ability to do so is implausible, but such is the nature of the modern thriller. Implausibility is one thing; the complete absence of credibility is another. There is nothing credible about Reacher’s consistent ability to knock out his opponents with a single blow, sometimes with a mere twitch of his body. Yet it is the ridiculous criminal scheme operated in the prison that cheats thriller fans out of the opportunity to suspend disbelief. A close second on the credibility scale is the corporation’s fear of Reacher who, as far as its executives know, is a drifter with no reason in the world to look for trouble in Mississippi.

Fans of tough guy fiction who value toughness more than strong plotting might enjoy No Plan B. Fans of Lee Child might be frustrated that books “co-written” with Andrew Child come across as factory fiction. The book has good pace and a fair amount of action, but little else of merit.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Better Off Dead by Lee Child and Andrew Chlid

Published by Delacorte Press on October 26, 2021

Despite their formulaic nature in recent years, I’m generally a fan of Reacher novels, in part because the formula is a good one, in part because of Lee Child’s spare writing style. The formula is to have Reacher walking down a road, stumble into a dangerous situation, make a reluctant decision to help the endangered, and fight his way through adversity as he subdues dangerous thugs and saves the day. Better Off Dead follows the formula but it lacks the tension and the style that keeps me coming back to Reacher.

In a slight departure from the formula, the story begins with Reacher lying dead on a morgue table. Readers know that Reacher is indestructible of necessity; killing him would end Lee Child’s income stream.

A few quick flashback chapters get back to the formula. As Reacher walks down a road, he spots a woman in a crashed car. She pulls a gun on him when he tries to help. Satisfied that Reacher isn’t one of the bad guys for whom she set a trap, the woman (Michaela, a/k/a Mickey) resets the trap and acquits herself handily, despite having a prosthetic foot. Reacher gets her to explain her problem, which involves the capture and possible murder of her twin brother, then reluctantly agrees to help her go after the bad guys. Part of helping her includes the opening scene in the morgue.

Dendoncker is the first of two bad guys. He seems to be manufacturing bombs. Maybe they are smoke bombs. Maybe they will release a poisonous gas. Michael was either willingly or unwillingly helping Dendoncker make the devices. I didn’t care much about Michael's fate because Mickey is such a one-dimensional character that her woes about her brother left me unmoved.

The second bad guy is named Khalil, although he exists more as a name than as a character. Whether he is working with Dendoncker or working at cross-purposes is a question that isn’t set up sufficiently to whet the reader’s interest in the answer. The eventual explanation of their relationship is strained and uninteresting.

The plot goes off the rails in the second half when Dendoncker decides to enlist Reacher in his evil scheme. The smart move, easily accomplished, would be to kill Reacher, but that would end Lee Child's income stream, so the villain can't behave intelligently. It’s not like Dendoncker has a shortage of lackeys to do his bidding. Instead, he has Reacher deliver one of his devices while holding Mickey hostage. The outcome is easy to predict.

The nature and purpose of Dendoncker’s device wasn’t made clear until after I stopped caring. Unfortunately, its purpose is the only clever and unexpected part of the story. The rest of the novel consists of Reacher hitting people. That’s fine, it’s what Reacher does, but the fight scenes in Better Off Dead lack pizzazz. At least Reacher didn’t hit someone in the throat (the current go-to move in tough guy thrillers), although he thought about it.

Lee Child is known for a crisp writing style that emphasizes short, punchy sentences. His style makes for easy and rapid reading, which probably contributes to his popularity. At the same time, he balances fragmented sentences with longer, more elegantly constructed passages. He creates a rhythm. This novel emphasizes the punch and minimizes the rhythm. I don’t know if that’s because Lee had less input into the writing style than his brother Andrew, but the style differs from other Reacher novels. I’m not used to seeing pointless sentences like “That was for sure” and “That was for damn sure” in a Reacher novel. The writing style feels like an attempt to copy Lee Child rather than authentic Lee Child. Enough Lee Child bleeds through the narrative to make the novel worth acquiring for Reacher completists, but readers looking for Lee Child at his best might to give this one a pass.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS