If you’ve never read Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, or at least heard of them, you may need to check what planet you’re living on.

Starting with 1997’s “Killing Floor”, Lee Child has continued to bring us the continuing adventures of Jack Reacher, recently putting out the latest installment “61 Hours”, the 14^th book in the hugely popular, international best-selling series.

“Bad Luck And Trouble” came out in 2008, and is the 11^th in the series.

Child tells the ongoing story of Jack Reacher, a six foot 5 inch former military policeman of 13 years, and having been part of a group of special investigators that comprised the most elite of the Army.

Since leaving the military, Reacher has been living a self-exiled drifter lifestyle, moving from town to town at the drop of a hat, purposely using anonymity to hide his trail “out of habit”, but still possessing a masterful command of his skills of investigation, and devastation, when and where the situation calls for it.  As likeable as he is, he’s just as ruthless and merciless where someone crosses him or his friends.  Being a former world champion rifleman and general weapons expert, as well as the ability to improvise with whatever happens to be on hand helps, too.

And that’s exactly what happens in Bad Luck And Trouble.

Receiving a distress call from one of his old unit, only to find out that another of them is dead, and two others missing, Reacher sets about to gather the remaining members of the unit to find out why one of them was pushed out of a helicopter window with legs already broken, in the middle of the desert.

When more members of the team start showing up missing, a slowly building plot begins to boil as Reacher and Co piece together the who, what,why,  where, and when.

In a high stakes race to solve the disappearances, keep the remaining unit members alive, and also involving top secret military weaponry, Child really delivers the payoff to the story as only he can.  I've yet to get to the end of a Lee Child book and ask "what?  That's it"

Jeff Harding lends his excellent narration skills providing a subtle but distinct performance, this audiobook goes for 13 hours in the unabridged version, and you’ll enjoy every minute of it.  One of the gems of the series.

While you may enjoy reading the books chronologically like I did, there’s very little serialization, and one can easily pick up any of the books in the series and not feel like they’re missing out on vitally important aspects of the character.  Having said that, there is something great about finding a character you really enjoy, and progressing as they do throughout all the adventures, and as the character evolves over time.

However, Jack Reacher is pretty much the same towards the most recent of the books as he was at the start.  A little older, but very much as he was in “Killing Floor” some 14 years ago.  One of the books in the middle even jumps back many years back to when Reacher was still an M.P. in the Army, so again, start at the beginning or don’t.  You’ll love them either way.