Reacher as a Teen Looks a Lot Like Reacher at Forty

"High Heat: A Reacher Novella" - Lee Child

A former coworker’s wife is a well-known author of true crime fiction. A few years back, she discovered that she could repurpose old articles and other content by publishing them only in e-content form and selling them at $2.99 per download as her fans gobbled them up. Apparently she isn't the only one – now you can now find short stories, short story collections and novellas all over Amazon at “bargain” prices. It’s apparently great way for well-known authors to bank some bucks for work they’d never published. A case in point is “High Heat,” a Jack Reacher novella from prolific author Lee Child.

“High Heat” is essentially a thought piece: it introduces a teenage version of Reacher as he visits New York City one hot July night in 1977. Yeah, that one: the night of the great blackout. Even at sixteen, Reacher is a study in bravado – with the stuff he needs to back it up. In just a few hours, Reacher tangles with a mafia don, glimpses a serial killer, assists a defrocked FBI agent, and has lots of fun with a Sarah Lawrence coed. You're sure he’ll come out the other side undamaged – after all, we can see Reacher as a retired MP in his forties.  While die-hard Reacher fans will snap up this novella for the “background” it contains (there actually isn't much), in truth Child is boiling a pot. There’s almost no character development because the entire novella is given over to action. That doesn't mean Child doesn't get in some good lines or interesting observations about human nature, but giving a callow teenager the kind of powers found in the adult version of Reacher is a stretch.

Willing suspension of disbelief wins out, though: because we like the protagonist and because it’s fairly well written, "High Heat" is worth the purchase price (as long as it doesn't get above about two bucks)…