No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories

by Lee Child

“So who even knows where you are?” “I do,” Reacher said. “That’s enough.” “You sure?”

might have been coffee. Or the water left over from washing the previous night’s dishes.

Kicking barefoot was strictly for the health club or the Olympic Games.

So kicking the guy was off the menu. Which was a sad limitation.

He had no trigger, either, but not in the same way as his big brother. Joe was permanently set to safe, and Reacher was permanently jammed wide open on full auto.

His own father had stopped buying new clothes at the age of forty, feeling that what he owned by that point would outlast him, and to gamble otherwise would be reckless extravagance.

he hoped they would live lives of peace, prosperity, and plenty, while simultaneously knowing they almost certainly wouldn’t.

promised plenty and delivered nothing.

Guys who let a situation unfold in its own good time were just stockpiling problems for themselves.

They’ll all say no.” “Maybe one slightly more emphatically than the others.” “I’m not sure I could tell the difference. It always feels about the same to me.

any human given instructions is at a disadvantage.

He wanted expert bureaucrats, but he didn’t want them to be in love with bureaucracy. There was a difference.

He wanted people who treated tasks like an enemy, to be dispatched fast and efficiently and ruthlessly. Or punitively, even.

full of local civilian hotheads with guns in their pockets and points to prove.

Sadly the state police’s suspect scored very low on that test.