... the writing style is ever-so-slightly different (Child’s writing is terser than Child and his brother) but the story is just as powerful ... Capitalizing on his size and intensity (a controlled rage bottled up in the form of a sledgehammer) we are reminded once again why Reacher is one of the coolest characters to ever wander around a topnotch thriller like this one ... fresh, lands a lot of unexpected punches and keeps you on edge to the very end. It’s a compulsively readable thriller that proves the series is primed to continue on at the highest level for many years to come.
Though recent books might have become a tad formulaic, Child’s latest thriller is the freshest, most original Jack Reacher novel in years, which could have something to do with Andrew Child, coming on to co-author for the first time. Either way, this entry—the 25th in Child’s series—packs a six-foot-five punch and takes readers on a wild, thoroughly entertaining ride ... Whereas Reacher might have felt more like John Wick in the last book than the lovable nomad fans have come to know and appreciate over the last two decades, Child has found a terrific balance here. While still a stone-cold badass, the Reacher this time around better resembles the Reacher from earlier books—a hero with a controlled rage bottled up in the form of a sledgehammer. It works for all the right reasons, capitalizing on his size and intensity, reminding readers once again why Reacher is one of the best characters to ever wander around the thriller genre ... Fresh, perfectly plotted, and packed with action, The Sentinal is one of the year’s beat, must-read thrillers . . . and proves that this series is primed to continue on at the highest level for many years to come.
Implausible, sure ... We tell ourselves stories in order to tune the fuck out, sometimes ... It doesn’t matter that we’re not exactly dealing with John le Carré and George Smiley here. Child has a very particular set of skills. Skills he has acquired over a very long career. Skills that make him a nightmare for readers who have to get up in the morning ... Reacher may lack the self-questioning complexity of Smiley or the queasy nuance of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, but Child makes his simplicity a virtue ... Apparently two Childs are as good as one, as I wouldn’t have known The Sentinel was coauthored if it didn’t say so on the cover. As ever, the prose is utilitarian, no cream or sugar, like Reacher’s coffee. Words impart information. Sentences tell you what is happening ... Nothing fancy: that’s the way to write a good thriller ... Of course there are nits to pick ... Reacher is supposed to be a math whiz, but he believes that 'forty-eight hours' is three words. The bad guys are awfully gullible this time around ... but I’ll be reading the twenty-sixth Jack Reacher novel.
Does this act of filial ventriloquism come off? After an effortful prelude in which Reacher beats up a nasty Nashville bar owner on behalf of the band he has ripped off, it pretty much does. I won’t pretend that The Sentinel rivals Lee’s early hot streak. But then Lee, by his own admission in Heather Martin’s recent biography, The Reacher Guy, was struggling to do that of late. And although Andrew takes on much of Lee’s artful simplicity of language and fares well with the set-piece violence, the new Reacher is slightly wittier and chattier than we are used to ... What we have here, once the throat-clearing is done, once our baddie-bashing former military policeman and his new allies are trapped into their rats-in-a-maze plot, is a thoroughly entertaining, mid-ranking Reacher adventure ... Heavens, though, when the world is crumbling, it’s good to have some of Reacher’s brutal certainties back. Pull back to observe the plot and it may all appear higgledy-piggledy in its construction. What matters, as before, is the intensity of the experience while you are in Reacher’s mindset. Few other bestselling authors would dare to bore you by detailing the length of their hero’s shower routine (a relaxed 14 minutes here). Yet that is of a piece with succinct yet avowedly thorough descriptions of restaurants, motel rooms, mansions, bunkers, junk yards, car parks and booby traps. So when the ultraviolence comes, when Reacher pulls off the impossible for the tenth time that week, we buy into it because of the commitment to detail ... As before, the storytelling loses its charm when the action moves away from our protagonist. These books always need Reacher’s ex-military mindset front and centre to sell their contrivances. Even so, you close The Sentinel thinking that the family firm is in decent hands. Good enough, anyway, that I’ll still be a customer for the next one in 12 months’ time.
The change in authors is subtle but detectable. For one thing, the technologically averse Reacher has acquired a cell phone. For another, the hero has become a bit chatty, talking more with other characters and telling readers more about his thinking, including how he maps out hand-to-hand combat in advance with thugs who outnumber him ... Despite the change in authors, the writing remains tight and the non-stop action is as propulsive as ever.
There is great fidelity in this first, co-authored Reacher book to the fully formed gestalt of its predecessors ... But some things are missing. The pace for this book is more of a canter than a gallop; that showed particularly in the closing chapters, which heretofore have been impossible to stop reading. The mystery inThe Sentinel felt too convoluted, and hence making for a protracted denouement. There are times when the writing felt more like filler, rather than driving the story forward ... This may seem a tough review. In fact, however, The Sentinel is quite an enjoyable book because of its fidelity to the Reacher brand and character[.]
... readers of this series will forever think of as the handoff book. It has hiccups. Reacher isn’t quite himself. He talks too much, gets off fewer great one-liners, isn’t as clever and has stopped being ugly, even if 'children had been known to run screaming at the sight of him.' That’s a long way from looking 'like a condom crammed with walnuts,' as Reacher was described in Tripwire in 1999 ... shows the same grisliness that was beginning to turn up in Lee’s later books; Andrew wrote that way from the start. It’s also action-packed to a fault, which robs it of the leanness that is one of the series’ main attractions ... There are those of us who always enjoyed the idea of Reacher’s rambling into another little Nowhere, finding somebody in distress, setting things right, draining the diner of coffee and ambling on. Not this time. Reacher doesn’t even arrive alone ... The Childs need to get back to Lee’s sharp writing game too ... The best thing about The Sentinel is the amount of action it generates, given that the dull-sounding Pleasantville area is full of generic locations ... The authors have added on many, many layers of plotting, to the point where three books seem compressed into one ... I have no idea why Reacher needs to do so much shopping this time, but he does. To be fair, the duct tape gets used.
... a travesty ... Everything about The Sentinel is clumsy ... Andrew Child knows what he should be doing; he just can’t manage it ... this Reacher says far too much. He’s a loquacious bore, a pedant, quibbling about words and given to explaining things at great length before he takes action. His mystique is dissolved by too much information all round ... the slowed-down action sequences simply don’t work. They have none of the grace of Lee’s own rhythm and syntax. Peculiarly fixated on left hands and right hands, they read like instruction manuals translated from another language ... attempts to emulate Lee Child’s withholding of necessary information (also known as suspense) on the level of plot but it just doesn’t sustain interest or coherently resolve. The attempt to move Reacher into the digital age (he tries a mobile) is a mistake, simply ... So, let’s accept, Lee Child is a writer who can’t be so easily reproduced. There is much more to his work than the transferable asset of Reacher ... The Reacher franchise has such momentum, the books will doubtless continue to sell anyway, just as those issued under the names of Robert Ludlum and James Patterson do. We still have those 24 originals, though. Like Wodehouse, they can be read repeatedly.
... it’s terrific. Sure, the writing style is ever-so-slightly different (Child’s writing is terser than Child and Grant’s), but the story is just as powerful ... Brutal action mixes with keen-eyed detective work as Reacher metes out his own brand of justice. It’s always a risk when someone who has written a series since its beginning turns over the reins to a new writer, but if this novel is a harbinger of what’s to come, then Jack is in good hands.
... nothing has changed ... Much of The Sentinel is humorous as Reacher patiently teaches bad guys about the flaws in their tactics. While there’s lots of action, the novel also feels like a procedural as Reacher interviews suspects and delves deeper toward the truth ... Apart from some timely plot elements (the title refers to a software program designed to prevent election fraud, for example), this new Reacher novel could have been published earlier. It continues the series without any sense that there’s now a coauthor. In a year of drastic change, fans will welcome the consistency.
