Looking for Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books in order? Never fear – we’re here to help!
A series of books can be a daunting prospect. Do you have to begin at the beginning? Which book is the first one? Which book is the best one? Are there sub-plots or sub-series to tap into first? The questions are many and the answers are not always straightforward, but we’re here to help bring some clarity to this confusion.
There are now 29 books in Lee Child’s highly successful Jack Reacher series, with the 30th, Exit Strategy, out in November this year. In the first thriller we’re introduced to Jack Reacher, a dangerous and unattainable lone ranger who used to be in the military. The series follows his exploits all across America and occasionally into other countries.
There are four books that form a sub-series starting off with 61 Hours then continuing in Worth Dying For, A Wanted Man and finally Never Go Back. They follow Reacher as he’s trying to get to Virginia to return to his old base and a woman’s voice.
The first book in Lee Child’s series, Killing Floor, is so good it seems a shame not to start there, but this is a series you can dip into at different stages because there’s always one constant – our hero himself. Here are the Jack Reacher books in order.
Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books in order:
Killing Floor by Lee Child
1. Killing Floor (1997)
Jack Reacher jumps off a bus and walks fourteen miles down a country road into Margrave, Georgia. An arbitrary decision he’s about to regret.
Reacher is the only stranger in town on the day they have had their first homicide in thirty years.The cops arrest Reacher and the police chief turns eyewitness to place him at the scene. As nasty secrets leak out, and the body count mounts, one thing is for sure: they picked the wrong guy to take the fall.
Die Trying by Lee Child
2. Die Trying (1998)
Jack Reacher, alone, strolling nowhere. A Chicago street in bright sunshine. A young woman, struggling on crutches. He offers her a steadying arm. And turns to see a handgun aimed at his stomach.
Chained in a dark van racing across America, Reacher doesn’t know why they’ve been kidnapped. The woman claims to be FBI. She’s certainly tough enough. But at their remote destination, will raw courage be enough to overcome the hopeless odds?
Tripwire by Lee Child
3. Tripwire (1999)
For Jack Reacher being invisible has become a habit. He spends his days digging swimming pools by hand and his nights as the bouncer in the local strip club in the Florida Keys. He doesn’t want to be found.
But someone has sent a private detective to seek him out. Then Reacher finds the guy beaten to death with his fingertips sliced off. It’s time to head north and work out who is trying to find him and why.
The Visitor by Lee Child
4. The Visitor (2000)
Sergeant Amy Callan and Lieutenant Caroline Cooke have a lot in common. Both were army high-flyers. Both were acquainted with Jack Reacher. Both were forced to resign from the service. Now they’re both dead.
Found in their own homes, naked, 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.
Title changed to Running Blind in the US.
Echo Burning by Lee Child
5. Echo Burning (2001)
Jack Reacher, adrift in the hellish heat of a Texas summer. Looking for a lift through the vast empty landscape. A woman stops, and offers a ride. She is young, rich and beautiful. But her husband’s in jail. When he comes out, he’s going to kill her.
Her family’s hostile, she can’t trust the cops, and the lawyers won’t help. She is entangled in a web of lies and prejudice, hatred and murder.
Jack Reacher never could resist a lady in distress.
Without Fail by Lee Child
6. Without Fail (2002)
Jack Reacher walks alone. No job, no ID, no last known address. But he never turns down a plea for help.
Now a woman tracks him down. A woman serving at the very heart of US power. A woman who needs Reacher’s assistance in her new job – protecting the Vice-President of the United States, who someone wants dead.
Persuader by Lee Child
7. Persuader (2003)
Jack Reacher lives for the moment. Without a home. Without commitment. But he has a burning desire to right wrongs – and rewrite his own agonizing past.
When Reacher witnesses a brutal kidnap attempt, he takes the law into his own hands. But a cop dies. Has Reacher lost his sense of right and wrong?
The Enemy by Lee Child
8. The Enemy (2004)
New Year’s Day, 1990. A soldier is found dead in a sleazy motel bed. Jack Reacher is the officer on duty. The soldier turns out to be a two-star general. The situation is bad enough, then Reacher finds the general’s wife.
This stomach-churning thriller turns back the clock to a younger Reacher, in dogtags. A Reacher who still believes in the service. A Reacher who imposes army discipline. Even if only in his own pragmatic way…
One Shot by Lee Child
9. One Shot (2005)
This is the novel the first Jack Reacher movie was based on so from a film perspective a valid place to start.
Six shots. Five dead. A heartland city thrown into terror. But within hours the cops have it solved. A slam-dunk case. Apart from one thing. The accused gunman refuses to talk except for a single phrase: Get Jack Reacher for me.
Reacher lives off the grid. He’s not looking for trouble. But sometimes trouble looks for him. What could connect the noble Reacher to this psychopathic killer?
The Hard Way by Lee Child
10. The Hard Way (2006)
Jack Reacher is alone, the way he likes it. He watches a man cross a New York street and drive away in a Mercedes. The car contains $1 million of ransom money. Reacher’s job is to make sure it all turns out right – money paid, family safely returned.
But Reacher is in the middle of a nasty little war where nothing is simple. What started on a busy New York street explodes three thousand miles away, in the sleepy English countryside.
Reacher’s going to have to do this one the hard way.
Bad Luck And Trouble by Lee Child
11. Bad Luck and Trouble (2007)
You do not mess with Jack Reacher. He is as close to untraceable as a person can get. A loner comfortable in his anonymity and solitude. So when a member of his old Army unit finds a way to contact him, he knows this has to be serious.
You do not mess with the Special Investigators. In the past the elite team always watched each other’s backs. Now one of them 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.
Nothing To Lose by Lee Child
12. Nothing To Lose (2008)
Between two small towns in Colorado, nothing but twelve miles of empty road. All Jack Reacher wants is a cup of coffee. What he gets are four redneck deputies, a vagrancy charge and a trip back to the line.
But Reacher is a big man, and he’s in shape. No job, no address, no baggage. Nothing, except bloody-minded curiosity. What are the secrets the locals seem so determined to hide?
Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
13. Gone Tomorrow (2009)
Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs. There are twelve things to look for. No one who has worked in law enforcement will ever forget them.
New York City. The subway, two o’clock in the morning. Jack Reacher studies his fellow passengers. Four are OK. The fifth isn’t.
The train brakes for Grand Central Station. Will Reacher intervene, and save lives? Or is he wrong? Will his intervention cost lives – including his own?
61 Hours by Lee Child
14. 61 Hours (2010)
Icy winter in South Dakota. A bus skids and crashes in a gathering storm. On the back seat: Jack Reacher, hitching a ride to nowhere. A life without baggage has many advantages. And disadvantages too, like facing the arctic cold without a coat.
A small town is threatened by sinister forces. One brave woman is standing up for justice. If she’s going to live to testify, she’ll need help from a man like Reacher. Because there’s a killer coming for her.
Has Reacher finally met his match? He doesn’t want to put the world to rights. He just doesn’t like people who put it to wrongs.
Worth Dying For by Lee Child
15. Worth Dying For (2010)
There’s deadly trouble in the wilds of Nebraska – and Reacher walks right into it. He falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved case of a missing eight-year-old girl that Reacher can’t let go.
Reacher – bruised and battered – should have just kept on going. But for Reacher, that was impossible.
What, in this fearful rural county, would be worth dying for?
The Affair by Lee Child
16. The Affair (2011)
Six months before the events in Killing Floor, Major Jack Reacher of the US Military Police goes undercover in Mississippi, to investigate a murder. A woman has had her throat cut behind a bar in Mississippi. Just down the road is a big army base. Is the murderer a local guy – or is he a soldier?
The county sheriff is a former US Marine – and a stunningly beautiful woman. Her investigation is going nowhere. Is the Pentagon stonewalling her? Or doesn’t she really want to find the killer?
If Reacher does what the army wants, will he be able to live with himself? And if he doesn’t, will the army be able to live with him?
A Wanted Man by Lee Child
17. A Wanted Man (2012)
When you’re as big and rough as Jack Reacher – and you have a badly set, freshly busted nose – it isn’t easy to hitch a ride. At last, he’s picked up by three strangers – two men and a woman.
Within minutes it becomes clear they’re all lying about everything – and there’s a police roadblock ahead. There has been an incident, and the cops are looking for the bad guys…
Will they get through because the three are innocent? Or because the three are now four? Is Reacher just a decoy?
Never Go Back by Lee Child
18. Never Go Back (2013)
Reacher has finally made it to Virginia. But the woman he’s meeting isn’t where she’s supposed to be and before Reacher knows it, there’s a lot that’s not quite the way it’s supposed to be. This is the book the second Jack Reacher film is based on.
Read the first chapter here or watch the film’s trailer here.
Personal by Lee Child
19. Personal (2014)
Jack Reacher walks alone. Once a go-to hard man in the US military police, now he’s a drifter of no fixed abode. But the army tracks him down. Because someone has taken a long-range shot at the French president.
Someone has taken a long-range shot at the French president. Only one man could have done it. And Reacher is the one man who can find him.
Make Me by Lee Child
20. Make Me (2015)
A remote railroad stop on the prairie with the curious name of Mother’s Rest seems perfect for an aimless one-day stopover. He expects to find a lonely pioneer tombstone in a sea of nearly-ripe wheat. Instead, there is a woman waiting for a missing colleague, a cryptic note about two hundred deaths, and a small town full of silent, watchful people.
Reacher’s one-day stopover turns into an open-ended quest leading to the most hidden reaches of the internet, and right into the nightmare heart of darkness.
Night School by Lee Child
21. Night School (2014)
It’s just a voice plucked from the air: ‘The American wants a hundred million dollars’. For what? Who from? It’s 1996, and the Soviets are long gone. But now there’s a new enemy. 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: Reacher, an FBI agent, and a CIA analyst. Their assignment? To find that American. And what he’s selling. And to whom. There is serious shit going on, signs of a world gone mad.
The Midnight Line by Lee Child
22. The Midnight Line (2017)
Reacher sees a West Point class ring in a pawn shop window. It’s tiny. It’s a woman cadet’s graduation present to herself. Why would she give it up? Reacher was a West Pointer too, and he knows what she went through to get it.
All he wants is to find the woman. He’ll have to go through bikers, cops, crooks, and low-life muscle. If she’s ok, he’ll walk away. If she’s not… he’ll stop at nothing. This is a raw and elemental quest for simple justice.
Past Tense by Lee Child
23. Past Tense (2018)
A young couple trying to get to New York City are stranded at a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere. Before long they’re trapped in an ominous game of life and death.
Meanwhile, Jack Reacher sets out on an epic road trip across America. He doesn’t get far. Deep in the New England woods, he sees a sign to a place he has never been – the town where his father was born. But when he arrives he is told no one named Reacher ever lived there. Now he wonders: who’s lying?
As the tension ratchets up and these two stories begin to entwine, the stakes have never been higher for Reacher.
Read the first three chapters of Past Tense here!
Blue Moon by Lee Child
24. Blue Moon (2019)
Jack Reacher is a former military cop, trained to notice things. He’s on a Greyhound bus, watching an elderly man sleeping in his seat, with a fat envelope of cash hanging out of his pocket. Another passenger is watching too… obviously hoping to get rich quick.
When the mugger finally makes his move, Reacher rides to the rescue. The old man is grateful, yet he turns down Reacher’s offer to help him home. He’s vulnerable, scared, and clearly in big, big trouble.
Elsewhere in the city, two ruthless rival criminal gangs, one Albanian, the other Ukrainian, are competing for control. Do they have a life-and-death hold on the old guy? Will Reacher sit back and let bad things happen? Or can he twist the situation to everyone’s benefit?
The Sentinel by Lee Child and Andrew Child
25. The Sentinel (2020)
Jack Reacher gets off a bus in Nashville, Tennessee, in a quest for food, lodging and some good country music. But when he encounters a band of musicians who have been cheated by an unscrupulous bar owner, he steps in to help…
Better Off Dead by Lee Child and Andrew Child
26. Better Off Dead (2021)
Reacher never backs down from a problem – and he’s about to find a big one, on a deserted Arizona road, where a Jeep has crashed into the only tree for miles around. Under the merciless desert sun, nothing is as it seems.
Minutes later Reacher is heading into the nearby border town, a backwater that has seen better days. Next to him is Michaela Fenton, an army veteran turned FBI agent, who is trying to find her twin brother. He might have got mixed up with some dangerous people. And Reacher might just need to pay them a visit.
Their leader has burrowed his influence deep into the town. Just to get in and meet the mysterious Dendoncker, Reacher is going to have to achieve the impossible. To get answers will be even harder. There are people in this hostile, empty place who would rather die than reveal their secrets. But then, if Reacher is coming after you, you might be better off dead.
No Plan B by Lee Child and Andrew Child
27. No Plan B (2022)
Gerrardsville, Colorado. One tragic event. Two witnesses. Two conflicting accounts. One witness sees a woman throw herself in front of a bus – clearly suicide. The other witness is Jack Reacher. And he sees what really happened – a man in grey hoodie and jeans, swift and silent as a shadow, pushed the victim to her death, before grabbing her bag and sauntering away.
Reacher follows the killer on foot, not knowing that this was no random act of violence. It is part of something much bigger…a sinister, secret conspiracy, with powerful people on the take, enmeshed in an elaborate plot that leaves no room for error. If any step is compromised, the threat will have to be quickly and permanently removed.
But when the threat is Reacher, there is No Plan B….
The Secret by Lee Child and Andrew Child
28. The Secret (2023)
1992. Eight respectable, upstanding people have been found dead across the US. These deaths look like accidents and don’t appear to be connected. Until one body – the victim of a fatal fall from a hospital window – generates some unexpected attention. That attention comes from the Secretary of Defence, who promptly calls for an inter-agency task force to investigate. Jack Reacher is assigned as the Army’s representative.
Reacher may be an exceptional soldier, but sweeping other people’s secrets under the carpet isn’t part of his skill set. As he races to discover the link between these victims, and who killed them, he must navigate around the ulterior motives of his new ‘partners’. And all while moving into the sight line of some of the most dangerous people he has ever encountered.
His mission is to uncover the truth. The question is: will Reacher bring the bad guys to justice the official way… or his way?
In Too Deep by Lee Child and Andrew Child
29. In Too Deep – October 2024
Jack Reacher wakes up, alone, in the dark, handcuffed to a makeshift bed. His right arm has suffered some major damage. His few possessions are gone. He has no memory of getting there. The last thing Reacher can recall is the car he hitched a ride in getting run off the road. The driver was killed.
His captors assume Reacher was the driver’s accomplice and patch up his wounds as they plan to make him talk. A plan that will backfire spectacularly . . .
Exit Strategy by Lee Child and Andrew Child
30. Exit Strategy (coming November 2025)
Jack Reacher will make three stops today. Not all of them were planned for.
First stop – a Baltimore coffee shop. A seat in the corner, facing the door. Black coffee, two refills, no messing about. A minor interruption from two of the customers, but nothing he can’t deal with swiftly. As he leaves, a young guy brushes against him in the doorway. Instinctively Reacher checks the pocket holding his cash and passport. There’s no problem. Nothing is missing.
Second stop – a store to buy a coat. Nothing fancy. Something he can ditch when he heads to warmer climes. Large enough to fit a man the size of a bank vault. As he pulls out his cash, he finds something new in his pocket. A handwritten note. A desperate plea for help.
Third stop – wherever this bend in the road takes him. Impressed by the guy’s technique and intrigued by the message, Reacher makes it his mission to find out more…
Plus…
Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories by Lee Child
Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories – coming September 2025
From urgently scribbling out his debut Killing Floor in pencil (the stub of which he still owns), to taking a step back with Blue Moon, and everything in between, here are 24 honest, witty and wise personal reflections on his life and work, crafted across decades.
Whether it is through Lee’s moving account of meeting a fan years after her mother brought her to a book signing; facing his first computer and the coming of the internet; writing about New York just before – and just after – 9/11, to later seeing his novels adapted for the big screen, each riveting piece deftly evokes where he was psychologically and physically when he wrote each novel.
Lee has clearly felt unwavering gratitude for his readers since 1997. And these stories were originally designed for fans of Reacher who may be interested in a ‘behind-the-scenes’ – or, in Lee’s words: ‘why the books turned out the way they did’. This is the story of a man who once put pencil to paper in an attempt to turn his luck around – and who made every word count.
No Middle Name by Lee Child
No Middle Name (2017)
All Lee Child’s shorter fiction featuring Jack Reacher in one volume. Read together, these twelve stories shed new light on Reacher’s past, illuminating how he grew up and developed into the wandering avenger who has captured the imagination of millions around the world. Read an extract here.
There you have it – the Jack Reacher books in order! How many have you read? Let us know in the comments below…
I have read all and can’t wait for the release of The Secret in October. Hopefully the next series on tv will be out this year also. Solid release from dull living.
Read them all except No Plan B, but Christmas is coming & it will fit nicely into any Christmas sock (space reserved in mine!). So what if the stories are formulaic – they are still a good escapist read and that is the most important point – gets you away from life’s troubles. Let Jack handle them!
I am ashamed to admit that I have read all the Jack Reacher books as I don’t usually read this type of book at all. I skip through all the violent bits as they are repetitive and rather ridiculous and the fact that he is virtually a vagrant yet the number of women who find him hard to resist is hard to swallow. However, I am completely hooked! It is the clever plot lines and the way Reacher works it all out that does it!
I’m not a big reader and have only read all of Andy mc Nabs Nick stone books. And all all of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books..
If anyone can suggest any books similar to these it would be appreciated.
Best to read not in the order listed above but in order of time. Will make more sense. Characters in other books are mentioned and family throughout.
Jack Reacher got me reading.
After mentioning that I liked the movies, was told it’s rubbish compared to the books. This I now know is true.
Netflix series is so much better. Can’t wait for series 2. Not a little man but a big man. Also much closer to the story line. At times even better.
Yes some are predictable
Yes some are silly like sucking fuel in a flexible hose from 100 meters down that can’t be done, and the tank would have been built on the surface. That annoyed me, but overall the only books I read. But next time will read them all in order.
Great article above thanks for writing it