Night School

One intercepted sentence starts everything: the American wants a hundred million dollars. Nobody knows who he is, what he is selling or who is buying. It is 1996, the Soviets are gone, and in a Hamburg apartment a group of smartly dressed young Saudis are planning something big. Jack Reacher, fresh off a secret mission, is handed a medal in the morning and sent back to school in the afternoon. The class has three students: Reacher, an FBI agent and a CIA analyst.

The twenty-first Reacher novel and a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller, it reunites him with Frances Neagley and returns to his Army years, so it reads well on its own. Expect clipped prose, sharp deductions and a steadily tightening net. Ideal for anyone who likes their thrillers lean, clever and set at a precise moment in recent history.