LATEST TITLES

THE MIDNIGHT LINE by Lee Child, Bantam Press, £20 (ebook £9.99) HHHHH

JACK REACHER, giant, righteous avenger, seeker of the truth – book number 22 and Lee Child shows no sign of flagging. Reacher sees a West Point class ring from 2005 in a pawn shop window in a small Midwestern town. The ring is tiny and must have belonged to a woman. He pledges to track her down, wanting to know who she was.

Curiosity sends him on a quest involving human damage, stolen prescription drugs, a beautiful sister, a private eye, a drug operator who wants Reacher dead, and a man who died in the wilds of Wyoming, eaten by a bear.

The writing is typically good, the scenarios swiftly executed and the pyrotechnics subdued. Reacher is back to his beginnings and Lee Child does him justice.

THE DREAMS OF BETHANY MELLMOTH by William Boyd, Viking, £14.99 (ebook £9.99) HHHHH

A CHANCE encounter leads a protagonist to rewind through the years of a past relationship, an art dealer called Ludo learns that a kiss is not enough, and a young German soldier fails to learn anything from his misguided attempts to save a chimpanzee in Africa, in this collection of short stories.

The Bethany of the title is a 24-year-old who stumbles from one relationship to the next, stopping only to try out her lover’s surname with her first name, before hurrying on to the next encounter.

This collection ends with a slow burning thriller about an actor whose speciality is roles where his character dies early in a film, and he uses knowledge gleaned on film sets to solve a murder mystery.

Boyd is a skilled and humorous storyteller, and his pleasure in exploring life’s uncertainties is apparent.