The Midnight Line, by Lee Child is a Jack Reacher novel. The Reacher character stays basically the same and the action of the story resonates with the others this author has written - currently 29.
Reacher gets off a bus at one of the first rest stops, intending to go to the end of the line, off to nowhere special, when he walks by a pawn shop and sees a small women’s West Point class ring in the window. He knows how hard they are to earn, especially for a woman, from his own years at the school. He sees that the ring has 3 initials inscribed inside: he buys it and decides to try to find the owner and return it.
He pushes the pawn shop owner for the source, and then moves up the chain of supply, which eventually mix with opioid dealers and trouble -of course. Along the way he is joined with a former FBI agent and Mackenzie, the sister of Rose, the ring ’s owner.
Arthur Scorpio’s laundromat in Rapid City, S.D. is a hub for an illegal opiate business and that contact suggests that Rose may be in Wyoming. The descriptions of the empty countryside seem to be a natural setting for what may be a sadness that is settling into the character Reacher.
We learn a lot about illegal use of opiate drugs and heroin both referred to as American products. Of course, the story has some fights with tough guys, expected in Reacher books.
The last part of the book offers some tenderness, maybe a surprise to Reacher fans, but the book is another one that you won’t want to put down.
Quotes: The Midnight Line
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to bill you.”
"The Zip Code is about the size of Chicago. With five people. But hey, welcome to Wyoming.”
“Her eyes were green, and they were warm and liquid with some kind of deep, dreamy satisfaction. There was sparkle, muted, like winking sunlight on a woodland stream. And bitter amusement. She was mocking him, and herself, and the whole wide world.”
“We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
