Copyright 2015 by Lee Child. Published by Dell, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
This is #20 in the series of books by Lee Child featuring Jack Reacher, the footloose one-man police force. I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad Reacher book; they range from Good to Great. This one is pretty close to Great.
The story here starts with Reacher getting off the train in Mother’s Rest, a hole-in-the-wall town on the route from Oklahoma City to Chicago. He is simply curious why a town would be named Mother’s Rest. Just simple curiosity on the part of a guy with nothing better to do. But he immediately encounters a woman who mistakes him for someone else. She is a PI looking for a colleague who was last seen in Mother’s Rest. Reacher also attracts some puzzling attention from some of the locals. After searching the town and failing to discover the origin of the Mother’s Rest name he is ready to resume his trip to Chicago. But he sees something at the train station that is even more curious that the name of the town, so he decides to stay and to team up with the woman to figure out what is going on.
The team eventually expands to include a science writer from the LA Times and takes him and his new partners on a journey to Chicago, Oklahoma City and San Francisco. The plot gets deeper and deeper and the mayhem soon starts. The body count in this one – at least the deaths involving Reacher – is just 5, but there are a lot of other deaths involved in the plot. Plus Reacher busts a few skulls and nuts. That is what he does.
A good story, well written and very fast-paced.
9 out of 10.