I’ve never read any of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, and I felt it was about time to put that right. He’s one of the bestselling writers in the world, and although I’ve never read him, I’ve seen and heard him interviewed on multiple occasions.

What little I know of Reacher comes from the two Tom Cruise films – a loner who arrives somewhere in often small-town America, and puts right a wrong, before going on his way. Except that I also know that Tom Cruise was physically wrong for the role. Reacher is a giant of a man. After two films, the series stopped, and we now learn that a Jack Reacher series will be coming to Amazon.

Because the Reacher novels are self-contained, the reader learning just enough about Reacher in each novel to form a picture of him, jumping in at the 24th novel in the series does not prove to be a problem.

In Blue Moon, Reacher has shown up in an unnamed medium-sized city (which may or may not be Detroit). On the bus ride, he’d noticed an elderly man across the aisle with an envelope full of cash showing in his pocket. Another bus passenger has noticed it too, and it takes Reacher’s intervention to prevent the older man being mugged.

We learn little at first about why the man needs the cash, but a tale eventually unfolds, and set against this is a background of a city divide between the Ukrainian mafia and the Albanian mafia.

Let’s just say that more than one person gets killed in this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first Reacher book – the story moved quickly, and the characters, although lightly drawn, were detailed enough to feel real. Reacher isn’t invincible, and not everything he does is as smart as he sometimes thinks it is.

Child keeps everything tight, but that doesn’t mean that the novel is entirely dialogue. Indeed, the most descriptive scenes tend to be fights, with colourful descriptions running for paragraphs.

Is it all believable? Probably not. Is it fun? Absolutely!