Revenge novels are always among the top of my must-read list. The excitement of a well-written book with a dangerous hero shoved in the underdog's role and up against impossible odds hooks me every time. Throw in a great character with a - mostly - realistic history and abilities and I'm a happy guy.

For the last few years, Lee Child has been writing about a character named Jack Reacher.

Reacher is an awesome hero. Not only is he incredibly physical (6'5" tall and 250 pounds), but he's also canny as a fox, something of an idiot savant when it comes to numbers, and has a near-photographic memory for people and places. Oh, and then there's the personal radar system that signals him whenever he's on dangerous ground.

After leaving his military career, Reacher has become something of a vagabond near-do-well. He hasn't ever married, never had children, doesn't own a house, and doesn't even have a driver's license. He has a habit of getting on buses and just letting them take him wherever they're going. Footloose, fancy-free, and always in trouble, he works just enough to get by. The only things he owns these days is a folding toothbrush, and - as a result of the 9/11 crisis - a passport and an ATM card.

The novels are always over the top when it comes to plot and action, but Child writes them so well that if the characters were real and the situations were true, fans just know this is how it would be.

Bad Luck And Trouble is the eleventh Reacher novel and just came out in hardcover. The other ten are all in paperback. Child is so good that he's moved onto my hardcover buy-list because I don't want to wait a year for the paperback. It takes a lot to make that list because space in my house is at a premium. He's already working on his twelfth Reacher novel, Play Dirty.

When Reacher was a military policeman ten years ago, he headed up a special team of eight trained investigators. Their jobs then had been to catch the bad guys - murderers, black marketers, con artists, and runaways - that operated within the United States Army. Over the two years the unit was together, they went up against some true hardcases and put their lives on the line nearly every day. Back then, they'd had a motto: "You don't mess with the special investigators."

That motto became a lifeline for them. No one was allowed to attack any member of the unit without the other seven taking part. During those two years, they'd covered each other's back through a number of close calls - against bullets and against commanding officers who hadn't cared for their investigations. They'd never lost anyone.