Entry strategy: Lee and Andrew Child’s latest thriller debuts at number one

The 30th instalment in the Jack Reacher series from Lee and Andrew Child has debuted in first place in the Official UK Top 50, according to the latest data from NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM).

Exit Strategy (Bantam) has sold 31,378 copies in its first week giving the duo their 14th collaborative number one and Lee Child his 35th. While that unit-sales figure is 2.3% down on the launch week for 2024’s title, In Too Deep, it is the first time a hardback Jack Reacher has made it to the overall top spot since 2021’s Better Off Dead.

Richard Osman keeps hold of second place in the Original Fiction (OF) with The Impossible Fortune (Viking), because although sales have slipped 9.3%, the previous week’s number one, Philip Pullman’s The Rose Field (Penguin and David Fickling Books), has fallen even faster, down 44.4% in its third week.

Osman’s 13,980 copies take the latest Thursday Murder Club title to more than 300,000 copies – a feat achieved by only three other titles thus far in 2025, including Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid (Little, Brown). McFadden’s biggest title to date, first published in 2023, sold 5,832 copies this week, down 5.5% compared with the previous seven-day period. But it is another one of the thriller writer’s titles taking glory as The Surrogate Mother (Poisoned Pen Press), first published in August of this year, has seen its sales jump 17.1% week-on-week to 7,288 copies, and it vaults from seventh to first in the Mass-Market Fiction chart – though that is only enough to give it 14th place overall.

The biggest new Non-Fiction title of the week comes from Gareth Southgate as his memoir on leadership, Dear England (Century), interests 8,599 readers, good enough for  11th place in the overall TCM and sixth in the Hardback Non-Fiction Top 20 (HBNF). The top spot here is returned to Charlie Mackesy’s Always Remember (Ebury Press) for a fourth non-consecutive HBNF number one, despite sales having fallen 17.3% to 20,934 copies against the previous week.

Mackesy replaces Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s Nobody’s Girl (Doubleday) at the top which has seen its sales fall 57.5% as the headlines surrounding Andrew Mountbatten Windsor have abated somewhat. Despite the drop, the 19,978 units it has sold in the past seven days is enough to give it second place in the HBNF Top 20 and third in the TCM Top 50.

Giuffre stays ahead of Partypooper, the 20th Wimpy Kid title from Jeff Kinney (Puffin), which falls from second place to fourth, though it retains the Children’s Top 20 number one with 17,166 copies sold, which represents a 39.7% contraction on it launch-week performance. 

Kinney has fared better than Sue Lynn Tan’s Never Ever After (Hodderscape) which was ranked second in the children’s chart and sixth in the TCM – but this week sees its sales drop 99.1% to just 128 copies in its second week, all but confirming that its first week performance was thanks to its appearance in subscription boxes.

The top of the Paperback Non-Fiction chart is preparing for the oncoming stocking filler season with The 1% Club Book 2 bagging the number one on the first time of asking with 6,490 copies sold. The tie-in of tricky questions based on the ITV quiz show of the same name has also seen its sales rise 45.6%, giving it the PBNF’s second spot, just over 3,000 copies behind its successor.

The TCM this week has seen 3.9 million books sold, a rise of 3%, with value rising a slight 0.1% to £38.1m – an extra £23,584 on the previous seven days.

Compared with the same week in 2024, volume has dropped 0.4% with value rising 0.3%.