A gentler Jack Reacher emerges in Lee Child's latest novel

This book adds its share of classic moments to the Reacher canon

Lee Child gives his books such nondescript titles that you often need a mnemonic to remember what they’re about. The Midnight Line is another forgettable name, so what should we call it? I started out thinking of it as “the one with the West Point ring”: That’s a plot point unlike anything in Child’s previous best-selling Jack Reacher books, and it turns up in Chapter 1, so it’s no spoiler. But by the time I closed the new novel, it was “the one that breaks your heart.”

There’s an unexpected Jack Reacher on display here. It turns out he can