“The Sentinel” is a thrilling book full of action and mystery written by Lee Child. This story follows Jack Reacher, a drifter, and Rusty Rutherford, an IT Specialist. When Reacher stops a kidnapping attempt on Rutherford, he then becomes Rutherford’s bodyguard and detective in order to find out what the motives for the kidnapping really were.
Reacher is a former military police detective who decided to become a drifter who hitchhikes around the United States. Since he is no longer bound by the rules of the military police he uses more violent methods to get information or to protect himself.
The main story starts with Reacher getting a ride into a small town. Later that day Reacher sees a group of people set up to grab someone off the street, so he intervenes, this one action unfolds a series of events involving Russian spies, corrupt police officers, and cultist Nazis.
One of the only problems in this story is that it only took a week for all the events to unfold, and when reading it seems like it would take much longer, Child does not make the days and weeks clear.
Another problem with the story is that it is very predictable, the reader knows that Reacher will win all the fights, or if he loses them he will escape shortly, for example towards the end of the book Reacher fights the “specialist from Moscow” in which he gets knocked down, but before he should be killed he just hops up and with a single blow knocks out the specialist. Reacher also seems to have the solutions to all the problems that arise.
Another detail that could be better is Rutherford’s role. It seems that Rutherford is only present in the first half of the book, after that Reacher and FBI agents working with him go on a spree where they find different people and interrogate them to try to find the source of the violence.
In the end this Lee Child Jack Reacher book: “The Sentinel” is about average, on a scale from 1-10 I would personally give this book a 5/10. It’s full of action and mystery, but falls short when you over analyze all the small details.
