Copyright 2017 by Lee Child, published by Bantam Books
Yes, another Jack Reacher book by Lee Child. I like them, for sure, but the fact that I have read 3 in a row is pure luck. I have a stack of, usually, 6 to 12 books in my to-be-read stack and I choose my next volume randomly, by flipping a coin. To get three Reachers in a row is beating the odds since I had only 3 in the stack and there are still 9 more books there after picking this one.
But the book. This is the 23rd in the Reacher franchise. It is not my favorite Reacher ever because it is, compared to most, very grim. But any Reacher is worth reading.
This one starts in Wisconsin, which makes it unique in my Reacher experience so far. He is on a bus, heading to some random destination in northern Wisconsin, chosen not by flipping a coin but by buying a ticket on the next bus out. But he gets off for a rest break somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin and wanders into a pawn shop where he spots a pawned West Point class ring. A West Point grad himself, he knows how valued these rings are. He immediately starts wondering why the owner pawned it and who that owner was. He decides he would like to return it to its owner. Some of his interest probably derived from the knowledge that it was a woman’s ring – it was very small.
He managed to extract some information from the pawn shop owner using some very Reacher-esque techniques (but no broken bones). He subsequently obtained more information from a member of a motorcycle gang after subduing several of the bikers. That led him to South Dakota where, in the course of observing a laundromat owned by a guy who reportedly provided the ring to the pawn shop, he runs across a PI who is looking for a missing person. It is not immediately obvious that the missing woman and the owner of the pawned ring are one and the same, but it is a logical conclusion.
Again, using the persuasive Reacher charm on the laundromat owner, he obtains information the leads him to Wyoming. But there the trail runs cold as the guy who purportedly supplied the ring died 18 months earlier in what was called an “accident”, his body ravaged by bears and his bones spread around the forest. But Reacher doesn’t give up easily and eventually hooks up with the PI whose missing person trail also led to the same little town in Wyoming. Soon the PI’s client, a woman from Illinois, joins them. The missing person is her twin sister, a West Point grad. They team up to search the area, convinced that she is still alive.
She is, but grievously injured and, all-in-all, in a bad way. The guy who became bear bait was, for a time, her boyfriend. She is reluctant to talk about either herself or her dead paramour. But for various reasons she is living a tenuous existence and the 3 amigos try very hard to find a solution to her problems. Meanwhile, Reacher has to survive a couple of attempts on his life, kill contracts issued by the laundromat owner who clearly is doing more than cleaning sheets.
The rest of the story is about how the amigos get the West Point grad better situated and how Reacher extracts retribution on the laundromat guy.
This is not the best Reacher novel by any means, but it is pretty satisfying in its conclusion.
7 out of 10.