Cheap Thrills

All right. Since I 'fessed up last night to having a secret weakness for Korean soaps, I might as well go all the way down the road of ritual self-abasement and own up to another guilty pleasure. I was reading the paper this morning and was delighted to note in the books section that Lee Child has a new, or at least new to me, Amazon single out, a short story in his Jack Reacher series called High Heat. It took all of about 30 seconds to download it and start reading, and maybe forty minutes to finish it, although I broke the 40 minutes up into segments in order to prolong the pleasure. This one is a sort of pre-prequel, picking up Reacher as a teenager on the streets of New York City (before his career as an army MP and subsequent incarnation as itinerant angel of justice and dispenser of beatdowns to the deserving). In very short order he has met and managed to piss off a Very Bad Man and has become involved in the lives of two young women, one more or less pre-professionally, and one more or less pre-romantically. The usual satisfying and engrossing mayhem in the pursuit of justice ensues.

I originally found out about Lee Child when out of the blue I got a box of books from my brother Otto—who was not in the habit of sending me books—about six or eight years ago that included several Reacher novels. I read those in huge, satisfying gulps, and have been a fanboy ever since. For those of you unfamiliar with Reacher, I suggest you give High Heat a shot. If you find it to your liking, there are, I believe, at last count, 30 novels in the series to choose from. I've read 'em all, and am eagerly awaiting Never Go Back, due out on September 3.

There. It's out in the open. I feel better now.