No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories

My name is Jack Reacher, and once I was a military cop, with heavy emphasis on the past tense. I have been out nearly as long as I was in. But old habits die hard. I had stepped into the bar the same way I always step anywhere, which is carefully.

Waste not, want not, make do and mend, don’t make an exhibition of yourself.

War is not about dying for your country. It’s about making the other guy die for his.

the coffee was burnt and stewed.

Where’s your luggage?” “I don’t use any.” “You have no stuff?” “I saw a little book in a store at the airport. Apparently we’re supposed to get rid of whatever doesn’t bring us joy.

Reacher defaulted to his instinctive position, which was to hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

Surprise was always good. Delay was always fatal. Guys who let a situation unfold in its own good time were just stockpiling problems for themselves.

Without breaking stride Reacher head-butted him full in the face. Left, right, bang. A perfect ten, for style and content, and power and precision.

Old Laurent Moutier was gone, at the age of ninety, taking with him like everyone does a lifetime of unknown private hopes and dreams and fears and experiences, and leaving behind him like most people do a thin trace of himself in his living descendants

Every island he had ever been on had a garbage problem.

I was in the 110th MP,” Reacher said. “I’m not scared of PTSD. PTSD is scared of me.

Women have to work twice as hard, to get half the credit.

great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.” And

all talking in a tense and agitated fashion, like a scene in a movie where folks find out the mining company has poisoned their water.

Like they say in England, why buy a dog and bark yourself?’ Back

Aaron stared down at his pad of paper, unsure. He said, “So what would be the best word for you? Vagrant?” Reacher said, “Itinerant. Distributed. Transient. Episodic.