I was thrilled to find this Kindle single by one of my favorite authors. It was a short story about the hero of his books, Reacher, a military police officer who took early retirement and is traveling around the United States to see it because, as a military brat, he had always been with his parents who had been continuously assigned overseas.

“Second Son” is about his travails when his father is reassigned to the Philippines and he has to start yet another school and face the school bullies. He manages not only to get in trouble with the bullies, but also with the new school, and his father gets blamed for some missing material from his military organization. Reacher uses the detective skills he hones in his later military police experiences to resolve these issues in a very creative way.

The reviews on Amazon only average three stars with the low ratings mainly due to lack of detail of Reacher’s entire childhood development and that a 13-year old couldn’t be that good a detective. With a 13-year old daughter, I can clearly imagine one who is that good a detective and thoroughly enjoyed the admittedly short story. I’d give it a strong four stars out of five and am looking forward to Child’s next Reacher novel, The Affair, due out in late September.