The fourth season of Amazon Prime’s Reacher series is just around the corner, and it hit me like a sledgehammer that I still hadn’t read the latest Reacher novel, Exit Strategy. I raced to my TBR pile, blew off the dust like I was unveiling a long-forgotten artifact, and jumped right in. As the 30th installment in the Reacher saga, this book marks the second solo venture by Andrew Child, Lee Child's younger sibling. They still print Lee’s name in bigger letters on the cover, which almost feels like sibling rivalry in print form. I should confess I had tried to read this book more times than I’d care to admit since getting my review copy from the publisher last year. But something about those initial pages kept throwing me off. Maybe it was the unmistakable feeling that Lee Child's hand wasn’t guiding this ship, a detail you can’t quite articulate but feel deeply, like an itch in your brain that you can’t scratch.

The plot kicks off in classic Reacher style: he finds himself in a random coffee shop in Baltimore, sipping black coffee like the lone wolf he is, with two refills because why not? Just as he’s about to glide out into the world, a young guy brushes past him in the doorway. In Reacher’s world, that means a quick mental check: cash, passport, all accounted for. No drama there. Next stop? A store to grab a coat because he never carries a suitcase. Just something hefty enough to fit a man built like a bank vault but simple enough to toss aside when he chases the sun. But then, as he pulls out his cash, he discovers an unexpected addition in his pocket: a handwritten note pleading for help. Intrigued, he sets off on a new mission.

For the very first time (that I can think of), I read a novel before the adaptation got released. Yep, that's right. I read Reacher: Killing Floor by Lee Child from beginning to end over a few days. G.P. Putnam's Sons first published it in 1997 under the title Killing Floor. The publisher retitled the book to Reacher: Killing Floor to tie in with the new streaming series Reacher which debuts tomorrow on Amazon Prime.