Capri's Homage to Reacher is a Bit of a Reach

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Diane Capri - Don't Know Jack

For Special Agent Kim Otto, the hunt begins with a phone call in the wee small hours of the morning. Actually, it began earlier with the delivery of a “burner” cell phone and a slim file on her target… but the real action starts with that phone call. She’s ordered onto a flight from Detroit to Atlanta, where she will meet her “second,” Special Agent Carlos Gaspar out of Miami. Their orders are to head to the town of Margrave, Georgia, to pick up the long-cold trail of their target… Jack (no middle) Reacher.

Just why the two are looking for Reacher isn’t readily apparent. As far as Otto can tell, he’s a paranoid killer who’s been off the grid for fifteen years now, and her unnamed “boss” has decided it’s time to bring him to justice. The notion that he’s a bad guy just goes to show you that these two feebs Don’t Know Jack.

Otto and Gaspar stumble into a bizarre murder scene and cryptic clues about counterfeiting and a high-level DC coverup involving hookers, mistresses, or both. They’re helped, albeit reluctantly, by superfox MILF Chief of Police Beverly Roscoe Trent, who just happens to have a gorgeous – and tall – 15-year-old daughter named Jacqueline, or Jack for short. The “boss” continues to send them willy-nilly around the mid-Atlantic region to talk to people, and – for some unknown reason – they end up in Washington’s most renowned brothel where Otto – for some unknown reason – has an unstated relationship with the madam. They solve the murder, of course, but their target stays just out of reach…

Diane Capri’s first fan-fiction novel in homage to Jack Reacher, Don’t Know Jack is filled with references to Killing Floor (the first novel in Lee Child’s 22-episode Reacher series), including references to “Kliner” counterfeit C-notes and an interview with the detective who originally arrested Reacher, Lamont Finlay. Child himself wrote the afterword for the novel (at least the ePub version I read). Capri’s style is similar, although – unlike Reacher – Otto doesn't ever get around to doin' the nasty with the male lead.

Capri’s novel progresses nicely, especially if you’re a fan of the Reacher series, for about thirty-six chapters. At that point, Otto has tracked a missing woman into Marion Wallace’s DC “party house,” where suddenly it’s as if you’ve shifted into a different book. Sure, the two are still looking for Reacher, but all of a sudden they’re referring to the mysterious voice on the telephone by his surname, instead of as “the boss.” Otto seems surprised that Wallace doesn’t seem to recognize her, even though they have some unstated history that appears to involve Otto’s ex-husband (who’d only been mentioned once or twice before). The shifts are, quite frankly, puzzling.

As a mystery, the novel is pretty pedestrian, and seems mainly interesting for its tie-in to the Reacher series; not to mention the Tom Cruise movie that was released later in the year. The shift from an omniscient, omnipotent boss to “Cooper on the top floor of the FBI building” is unsettling, in particular because in subsequent “Hunt for Reacher” short stories the boss becomes once again anonymous. Were it not for that flaw, I’d have rated this slightly above average, but that’s too glaring for my tastes.

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