Jack Reacher is back, this time in New York City, where he catches sight of a man crossing the street and getting into a Mercedes. It turns out that car contains ransom money for the wife and child of a military contractor, and Reacher is pulled into helping that guy and his soldiers-for-hire track down the kidnappers.
As with all Reacher books, it has a grippy opening, decent detective work, a few fun action scenes, and incredibly tight, fluid writing. This book also has a number of genuinely laugh-out-loud scenes, mostly in the form of witty one-liners from Reacher.
The only drawback is that I found the big twists to be completely predictable. I figured out what was going on early on in the book, and found it a bit painful to see the story drag them out, and present them as major revelations. But the plot is never the strong point of a Reacher book. In most of them, the plot makes no sense at all, whereas in this one, it was at least logical and reasonable (perhaps overly so, making it guessable).
Nevertheless, as with all of Lee Child’s books, I always found myself looking forward to picking ths one up, and enjoying some classic Reacher escapism.
