Looking to get stuck into one of Lee Child’s 29 Jack Reacher novels but not sure which is the best? We figured a list of all Jack Reacher novels ranked (best to worst) might come in handy! We’ve also provided a summary of each book, to give you a heads-up on the plot.
The list is based on the review ratings over at goodreads, and we tip our hat to those fine folks for building such a fantastic resource!
We’ll update the list regularly, so stay tuned for any ups-and-downs or when new releases are added. So, without further ado…
Jack Reacher novels ranked (best to worst)
1. One Shot (2005) 4.24 avg rating
Six shots. Five dead.
When a heartland city is engulfed in terror at the hands of a gunman, the cops seem to have the case solved within hours, when a military sniper is accused of murder.
But surely a military sniper wouldn’t miss? Maybe this isn’t as cut and dried as the cops think.
The accused gunman refuses to talk, except for a single request: “Get Jack Reacher for me”.
What could connect Reacher to this psychopathic killer?
2. Worth Dying For (2010) 4.22 avg rating
There’s deadly trouble brewing in the wilds of Nebraska – and Jack Reacher walks straight it.
First he gets on the wrong side of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. The Duncans have past secrets they’re trying to hide and are awaiting a secret shipment that’s already late – and their customers aren’t the kind you can afford to annoy.
But it’s the decades-old unsolved case of a missing eight-year-old girl, that Reacher can’t ignore.
Reacher should have just kept on going, not got involved. But for Reacher, that was impossible.
3. Bad Luck and Trouble (2007) 4.22 avg rating
Jack Reacher is a loner: comfortable with his solitary, anonymous existence – as close to untraceable as a person can get.
So when a member of his old Army unit finds a way to get in touch, he knows this has to be serious.
Now one of Reacher’s past elite team has shown up dead in the California desert and six more are missing.
Reacher’s old buddies are in big trouble, and he can’t let that go.
4. The Hard Way (2006) 4.19 avg rating
Jack Reacher watches a man cross the street in New York and drive away in a Mercedes.
Nothing out of the ordinary here? Wrong.
The car contains $1 million of ransom money and Reacher is tasked with making things run smoothly – money paid, family safely returned.
What starts out on a busy New York street, explodes on the other side of the Atlantic, in the sleepy English countryside.
Reacher’s going to have to do this one the hard way.
5. Gone Tomorrow (2009) 4.19 avg rating
New York City. The subway, two o’clock in the morning.
Those who’ve worked in law enforcement know how to spot a suicide bomber – there are tell-tale signs.
Jack Reacher studies his fellow passengers. Four don’t raise any alarms. The fifth does. The train stops at Grand Central Station.
Will Reacher intervene, and save lives?
If he’s wrong, his intervention could cost lives – including his own.
6. The Enemy (2004) 4.17 avg rating
New Year’s Day, 1990. North Carolina.
A two-star general soldier is found dead in a sleazy motel, and Jack Reacher is the officer on duty.
As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, Reacher then finds the body of the general’s wife.
This gripping thriller turns the clock back to a younger Reacher, the one who wears dog tags and still believes in the service. A Reacher who instils army discipline – just in his own practical way.
7. Without Fail (2002) 4.16 avg rating
Reacher may have no job, no ID, no last known address.
But he never turns down a plea for help.
This time a woman has tracked him down. And not any woman. A woman serving in the nucleus of US power.
And she needs Jack Reacher’s assistance in her new job – protecting the Vice-President of the United States.
Because someone wants the Vice-President dead.
8. The Affair (2011) 4.16 avg rating
A woman’s throat is cut behind a bar in Mississippi.
There’s an army base just down the road. Is the murderer a civilian – or a soldier?
Jack Reacher, serving in the military police, is assigned to the case undercover.
The county sheriff is a former U.S. Marine – but her investigation is going nowhere. Are the powers that be stonewalling her? Or is she trying not to solve this one?
The Affair marks a turning point in Reacher’s career.
Will he be able to live with himself if he plays it the way the army wants? And if plays it his own way, will the army be able to live with him?
9. Persuader (2003) 4.14 avg rating
Jack Reacher lives for the moment. Always has, always will.
No commitments, no home. But he craves to right wrongs – and rewrite the story of his own painful past.
When he witnesses a brutal kidnapping attempt, he decides to take the law into his own hands.
But a cop dies. Has Reacher somehow lost his sense of right and wrong?
10. The Visitor (2000) 4.13 avg rating
Two high-ranking female army soldiers with a lot in common.
Both known to Jack Reacher. Both forced to resign from the service. Now both are dead. Found naked in their own homes, in a bath full of paint.
Apparent victims of an army man. A loner, a smart guy with a score to settle.
A ruthless vigilante.
A man just like Jack Reacher.
11. 61 Hours (2010) 4.12 avg rating
61 hours and counting…
South Dakota. A bus skids and crashes in an icy winter storm. On board: Jack Reacher, hitching a ride to nowhere.
A small town threatened by sinister forces. One brave woman is standing up for justice but if she’s going to live long enough to testify, she’ll need a man like Reacher’s help.
Because there’s a killer coming for her.
Has Jack Reacher finally met his match?
12. Tripwire (1999) 4.12 avg rating
Jack Reacher has got used to being invisible.
His days are spent working by hand and his nights as a bouncer in the local, Florida Keys strip club.
He’s a man who doesn’t want to be found.
But someone has other ideas and has sent a private detective to seek him out. Then Reacher finds the guy beaten to death, fingertips sliced off.
Reacher must head north and work out who is trying to find him – and why.
13. The Midnight Line (2017) 4.10 avg rating
Reacher passes a pawn shop and notices a West Point class ring in the window. It’s a female cadet’s graduation present to herself.
Reacher was a West Pointer too. He knows what she went through to get it.. so why would she give it up?
All he wants is to find the woman.
He’ll have to get past bikers, cops and criminals to do so. If she’s ok, he’ll walk away. If she’s not, he’ll stop at nothing.
14. The Secret (2023) 4.09 avg rating
A hospital patient wakes to find two strangers by his bed, who ask him a simple but impossible question. Minutes later he falls to his death from his 12th floor window.
The death gets the Secretary of Defense’s attention, who prompts an inter-agency task force to investigate.
Jack Reacher is assigned as the Army’s representative. If he gets a result, great. If not, he’s a convenient fall guy.
Reacher may be an extraordinary military investigator, but office politics don’t float his boat. In his race to identify a merciless killer and uncover a secret of over 20 years, he must learn to navigate his new partners.
15. Never Go Back (2013) 4.09 avg rating
Jack Reacher has finally arrived in Virginia, after a long journey from snowy South Dakota.
It’s here that he wants to meet the new commanding officer of his old unit – the 110th Military Police – Major Susan Turner.
But she’s disappeared, and things are getting strange.
Accused of a sixteen-year-old murder and co-opted back into the army, Reacher says nothing.
But you can bet your life he’s thinking of a way out.
16. In Too Deep (2024) 4.09 avg rating
Reacher wakes alone in the dark, injured and cuffed to a makeshift bed.
The last thing he remembers is hitching a lift in a car that was then run off the road.
His captors think he was the drivers’ accomplice and they want him to talk.
But they’ve got it all wrong.
And their plan is about to backfire in a big way.
17. Killing Floor (1997) 4.08 avg rating
Jack Reacher jumps off a bus and walks fourteen miles down a country road into Margrave, Georgia.
Why? Something about a blues musician..
It’s a decision he’s about to regret – because he’s the only stranger in town on the day they have had their first murder in thirty years.
Reacher is arrested and placed at the scene, but as twisted secrets emerge, and the body count rises, one thing is for sure..
They picked the wrong guy to take the fall.
18. Die Trying (1998) 4.07 avg rating
Reacher, walking alone in Chicago, going nowhere in particular.
When he stops to help a young woman struggling on crutches – to offer her an arm – he turns to find a handgun aimed squarely at his stomach.
Kidnapped and racing across America in a dark van, Reacher doesn’t know why this is happening.
The woman alleges to be FBI. She seems tough enough. But at their remote location, will courage be enough to outweigh the hopeless odds?
19. Past Tense (2018) 4.06 avg rating
A young couple on their way to New York City, stranded at a motel in the back of beyond. Soon they are trapped in an sinister game of life and death.
Meanwhile, Jack Reacher heads off on a road trip across America. But he doesn’t get far when, deep in the New England woods, he sees a sign to the town where his father was born – a place he has never been.
But no-one knows anyone called Reacher that ever lived there. So, who’s lying?
As the tension mounts, the two stories entangle, and the stakes for Reacher have never been so high.
20. A Wanted Man (2012) 4.06 avg rating
Jack Reacher is a brute of a man with a freshly busted up nose.. so hitching a ride in Nebraska isn’t straightforward.
Picked up at last by three strangers – two men and a woman. But something’s wrong.
Reacher can tell they’re lying about everything they’ve said to him, and there’s a police roadblock ahead. Something bad has gone down, and the cops are looking for the culprits.
Are they innocent? Do they think Reacher’s presence will help them get through? Or is he just a decoy?
21. Echo Burning (2001) 4.04 avg rating
Jack Reacher, looking for a lift again, this time in the scorching heat of a Texas summer.
A woman pulls over, and offers him a ride. She is young, rich and beautiful.
But her husband’s in jail.. and when he gets out, he’s coming after her. He wants to kill her.
With a family that’s hostile towards her, local cops she can’t trust, and lawyers that won’t help.. she’s caught in a web of lies, prejudice, hatred and murder.
Jack Reacher never could resist a lady in distress.
22. Night School (2016) 4.02 avg rating
‘The American wants a hundred million dollars’, says a voice plucked from the air.
For what? Who from?
In an apartment in Hamburg, a group of smartly-dressed young Saudis are planning something big.
Jack Reacher is fresh off a secret mission. The Army pats him on the back and sends him to a school with only three students: himself, an FBI agent, and a CIA analyst. Their assignment?
To find that American, what he’s selling, and to whom.
23. Make Me (2015) 4.01 avg rating
Mother’s Rest: a curious, remote railroad stop on the prairie.
Jack Reacher needs to put his head down for the night, and this place shouldn’t throw up any surprises.
But there’s a lady waiting for a missing colleague, a cryptic note about two hundred deaths, and a small town full of silent, watchful people.
Reacher’s stop-over turns into another open-ended investigation, that leads him into the most hidden corners of the internet.. and right towards the darkness.
24. No Plan B (2022) 3.98 avg rating
Gerrardsville, Colorado. Two witnesses, one tragic event.
One witness sees a woman throw herself in front of a bus. The other witness is Jack Reacher. And he sees what really happened – a man pushing the victim to her death.
Reacher follows the killer, unaware that this was no random act of violence.
There is something far bigger, more sinister at work. A secret conspiracy, where powerful people seek to gain, and a complex plot that leaves no room for error.
If any part is compromised, the threat will have to be rapidly and permanently removed. Because when the threat is Jack Reacher, there is No Plan B…
25. Personal (2014) 3.98 avg rating
Someone has taken a long-range shot at the French president.
The Army think that only one man could have done it, and that only Jack Reacher can find him.
To do so, requires Reacher to embark on a heart-stopping, unnerving assignment across the Atlantic to Paris – and then to London.
The stakes have never been higher – because this time, it’s personal.
26. Blue Moon (2019) 3.96 avg rating
Jack Reacher arrives in a nameless city, where two rival criminal gangs are competing for control.
An elderly man sleeping in his seat on a bus, with a huge envelope of cash hanging out of his pocket. Another passenger watching, hoping to get rich quick. As the mugger makes his move, Reacher steps in.
Although grateful, the old man turns down Reacher’s offer to help him home – he’s vulnerable, appears scared and is clearly in big trouble.
What hold could the city’s gangs have over him? Will Reacher be in time to stop bad things happening?
The odds are far better with Reacher involved.. that’s for damn sure.
27. The Sentinel (2020) 3.96 avg rating
Jack Reacher gets out of his ride at a sleepy, unremarkable town outside Nashville, Tennessee.
He plans to grab a coffee and move straight on.
But that’s not going to happen. Because the town has been shut down by a cyber attack.
At the heart of it all, is Rusty Rutherford. On the surface, he’s just an average IT guy, but he knows more than he thinks.
As the bad guys move in on Rusty, Reacher moves in on them.
28. Nothing to Lose (2008) 3.93 avg rating
Between two small towns in Colorado, all Jack Reacher wants is a cup of coffee.
What he gets are four redneck deputies, a vagrancy charge and a sense that something isn’t right here.
He has no job, no address, nothing. Nothing that is, except an unshakeable curiosity.
What secrets are the locals so intent on hiding? Time for Reacher to find out.
29. Better Off Dead (2021) 3.84 avg rating
Under the merciless Arizona sun, a Jeep has crashed into the only tree for miles around.
Minutes later, Jack Reacher is heading into the nearby, backwater border town. Next to him is Michaela Fenton, ex-army turned FBI agent, who is trying to find her twin brother.
He might have got mixed up with some dangerous people. And Reacher might need to pay them a visit.
But just to meet their mysterious leader – Dendoncker – Reacher is going to need to achieve the impossible.
Answers will be even harder to come by, as there are people in this empty, hostile place that would rather die than have their secrets revealed.
So there you have it.. all of the Jack Reacher novels ranked from best to worst!
Have you read any of the books from this series yet – if so what did you think? Let us know in the comments below…