This is the third book in the series, but I don't think that really matters. Jack has been drifting and is semi-settled in Florida, digging swimming pools by day and working security at a strip club by night. He's living an anonymous life, as close to off the grid as he can. He likes it that way.
A private eye comes looking for him, he evades the man's questions and lies about his identity. Later, the detective is found brutally murdered and Jack heads up north to New York to trace the killers and whoever sent the detective after him.
The hirer of the detective is the daughter of his recently deceased CO from his army days. Together they start digging into the past and uncover some dastardly plots along the way, unwittingly joining against time to save the life of a family in dire trouble from a conscienceless sociopath.
To call the prose workmanlike would be to pay it a compliment. It's a very quick and easy read, but that's the best that can be said about the prose. This book is very much a victory of content over style.
I have some quite major reservations about this book, and some minor ones. One of the minor ones is the lack of imagination for home furnishing and decoration displayed. Everyone whose home is described has white walls and minimalistic taste in decoration. Both Reacher's love interest Jodie, and the villainous Hobie live in cut and paste described white apartments.
Speaking of Jodie, this is where the biggest ick comes in. You see, we're told that Reacher knew her 15 years earlier, when she was 15, and he was 24. we're also told that he was obsessed with her in a sexual way back then. If it was a one off reference, it might have been ok, but it's not. every time they're in the same scene for the first half of the book, we spend at least half a page on his rumination of how she looked when she was 15, and that she's just as hot now. But this is apparently ok, because she was obsessed with him too. It was not my favourite relationship building device that I've ever read in a book.
Another issue I have with this is the whole cliché that we know he's a villain because he has a burned face and a disability.
I know this book is the literary equivalent of the switchyourbrainoff type of summer blockbuster movie, but even by those standards, Reacher is a bit dim in places. He's apparently a great detective and investigator.
spoiler ahead
but in one scene, he's looking at a series of skeletons in their own caskets and describing how each one dies. We know they're in individual caskets. We know each skeleton is complete. It takes him more than half an hour to realise that there is an extra hand in one of the caskets. The book tries to cover this by saying "there were 15 hands", but because they're in separate caskets, this just means that one of the bodies he's just accurately described the manner of death on has 3 hands.
Despite all these, it was a fun read when I wasn't icked out at his obsession with teenaged Jodie. I can understand why they're popular and will probably read another at some point as a palate cleanser if something else has been too highbrow.
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