Brothers Lee and Andrew Child collaborate on this fast-paced thriller, 25th in the Jack Reacher series. Reacher forces a bar manager to pay two Nashville musicians being cheated out of their night's pay. You don't mess with Reacher, an ex-Army MP who is 6-feet-5 and 250 pounds, but if you try to hurt someone he'll mess with you. So when he witnesses bad guys (who turn out to be Russians) trying to kidnap a man, Reacher comes to the rescue. Said rescuee is Rusty Rutherford, who has been unjustly fired from his job as a nearby town's IT manager. Locally, everyone hates Rusty because of a disaster with the town's computers. But Reacher goes to great lengths to protect him. A police officer asks, "Why do you care so much about Rusty Rutherford? No one else does." Turns out he may have "something a certain foreign power is desperate to get its hands on." Someone is "specifically trying to erode faith in the election system itself." (Well, that's a ridiculous premise--who would ever mess with American elections?) Reacher is a most entertaining character: His "default was to move extremely slow or extremely fast," and in this Tennessee town he does lots of the latter. He needs to, with guys like Denisov, a Russian interrogator who has the "ability to loosen tongues. And bowels." Smart but not especially deep, Reacher is decidedly low-tech, unfamiliar with computers or cellphones. And of course he's a larger-than-life fighter who can really give evildoers what they deserve. Other than that, he sees a problem, fixes it, and moves on. The story's style is crisp, sometimes too much so. Plenty of short sentences. Like this. And it can grate. Or maybe it's great. You decide. The plot, the pace, and the punches will keep Child fans satisfied. Reach for this one. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

If we assume the Jack Reacher novels follow a strictly accurate chronology, then the former military cop turns 60 this year. His creator, Lee Child, turns 66, which may help to explain why Child has enlisted his younger brother, novelist Andrew Grant, as his coauthor and eventual inheritor of the Reacher series: Lee Child (real name: James Grant) wants to retire. But he doesn't want Jack to retire. The Sentinel is the first novel credited to Child and Grant, and--prepare to let out a big breath--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. A man is wrongly accused of setting in motion events that proved catastrophic to a Tennessee town; a group of villains are intensely interested in getting their hands on the man, although their reasons are vaguely defined at the outset. Reacher wanders into the middle of it all and winds up risking his life to save another's. 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.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Jack Reacher fans' concern about Lee Child's decision to bow out of the series proves unwarranted in this terrific first Reacher novel coauthored by both Child and his brother, Andrew Grant.

Jack Reacher returns in the 25th book in the series (after Blue Moon). The big franchise news is that Child and his brother, thriller writer Andrew Grant (False Witness), will cowrite several Reacher novels before Child hands over the reins to his brother, who also inherits the "Child" name. In this first collaboration, Reacher stops in Nashville, where he quickly "adjudicates" a dispute between a local band and a club owner. Then he heads out of town and straight into more trouble in a small burg 75 miles south of Nashville. The town's computer systems have been hacked and ransomed, and everyone blames Rusty Rutherford, the town's IT person. Rusty meets Reacher when Reacher saves him from an attempted kidnapping. He stays on to help Rusty untangle the motivations of his would-be abductors. Reacher encounters cops good and bad, Russian thugs, a mysterious millionaire, fierce women, and lots of people he just has to beat up. VERDICT Longtime fans will be satisfied with this straightforward adventure filled with familiar Reacherisms and more depth. He even acquires a cell phone, briefly. Those who enjoy Grant's "David Trevellyan" series will also enjoy this book. It's fun--but also difficult--to try to discern which brother wrote what.--Liz French, Library Journal