MAKE ME marks an anniversary of sorts for Jack Reacher and his creator, Lee Child. It is the 20th Reacher book to be published over the course of 18 years. If Reacher himself seems a touch worse for the wear (more on that in a bit) after being the target of physical abuse for almost two decades --- though always ultimately giving more than he gets --- Child certainly demonstrates that he continues to be as capable of keeping things as fresh and as interesting as when he introduced Reacher in 1997.

This latest installment kicks off with a brief moment of mistaken identity. Following an enigmatic introductory vignette, Reacher detrains, if you will, at a literal whistle-stop known as Mother’s Rest, smack dab in the middle of a thousand miles of indistinguishable nowhere in America’s heartland. The name of the place is the initial tug on Reacher’s interest, or, to be more exact, the origin of the name of the place. Reacher travels to Mother’s Rest to ascertain the origin, but stays for his gradual interest in Michelle Chang, who is the source of the aforementioned mistaken identity. Chang is a former FBI agent who is now an operative affiliated with a large private investigation firm. She is in Mother’s Rest due to a request for assistance from a fellow operative named Keever, who is based in Oklahoma City. Keever is supposed to meet Chang in Mother’s Rest, but is nowhere to be found (though the reader knows a bit more about that than Chang does). Reacher bears a fleeting resemblance to Keever when standing in shadow, hence the brief mistaken identity. 

"MAKE ME is a bit of a mix of Reacher old and new, to excellent effect. He is still the capable and savvy tough guy we first met so many years ago, but this 20th installment presents a vulnerable side of him that rarely has been seen, if it all."

Reacher plans to stay one night in Mother’s Rest, ascertain the origin of the town’s name, and, in typical Reacher fashion, move on. Things don’t go that way, of course. There are a couple of reasons for Reacher’s delay. One is his nascent interest in Chang, of which the reader becomes aware (almost) before he does. Equally compelling, however, are the attitude and actions of the good citizens of Mother’s Rest. They don’t know the origin of the name of the town, and are more interested in seeing the back of Reacher (and Chang as well). Naturally, the longer and harder they push Reacher toward leaving, the more he wishes to stay. He does a bit of elementary but truly sharp detective work to pick up Keever’s very faint trail, one that he and Chang follow when they finally leave Mother’s Rest on Reacher’s terms.

What unfolds is a bit of cross-country travel on planes and automobiles --- “trains” having already been covered --- wherein Reacher and Chang follow a faint but very real set of clues from Mother’s Rest to Chicago and Los Angeles, among other places, while trying to figure out what Keever was working on and why. You just know that they will come back to Mother’s Rest, where the final answer awaits them. Prepare to be surprised and shocked.

MAKE ME is a bit of a mix of Reacher old and new, to excellent effect. He is still the capable and savvy tough guy we first met so many years ago, but this 20th installment presents a vulnerable side of him that rarely has been seen, if it all. This vulnerability is physical as well as emotional, which one might expect, given the injuries that he has experienced over the years. Additionally, this book gives the technologically averse Reacher the opportunity to learn about a new subject --- the darknet, in this case, and some of the truly unusual (not to mention awful) things that lurk within --- that in turn contains the key to the dark and terrible mystery that forms the core of MAKE ME.

The ending might cause readers to wonder if Child is perhaps in the process of winding things down for his longtime protagonist in, say, the next five or six books. If such is the case --- and that is a big “if” --- fans can hardly complain, given that the series has experienced a long and wondrous run. That chain has been kept alive with MAKE ME, and presumably will continue into the immediate and foreseeable future.