Copyright 1999 by Lee Child. Published by Penguin Random House, LLC, New York.
Chronologically, this is the third of the (many) Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. I like them all, as I have mentioned before. This one isn’t my favorite as it is long on suspense and air travel, but with relatively litte (for a Reacher story) action. It is also a book which, I realized when I started reading it, that I had read before, so much of the suspense was spoiled in a second reading. But I hadn’t reviewed it, possibly indicating that I had read it a long time ago. So I will review it now.
The story begins with Reacher in Key West, doing manual labor. A guy comes to town looking for Reacher. He finds him, but Reacher denies his identity – he didn’t know the guy, didn’t know the person (“Mrs Jacob”) who sent him. Why complicate his life?
Then two other guys appear, also looking for Reacher. And the first guy shows up dead. So much for keeping his life simple. What is going on? Reacher feels compelled to find out. He travels to New York City where the dead guy – a private investigator – had his office. He then discovers – by unintentionally crashing the funeral of his former commanding officer, Leon Garber – that the mysterious “Mrs Jacob” is the married name of Garber’s daughter, Jodie, now divorced.
Leon had been tasked, before his death, with investigating what had happened to a local boy, Victor Hobie, who had never returned from Vietnam but, oddly, was not listed as MIA. Child lets us, as readers, learn what happened to Hobie long before Reacher figures it out – he returned home, without telling his parents, and was living a life of crime in New York. Unraveling the mystery and taking down Hobie – and, in the process, falling in love with Jodie and saving her life – is the crux of the story.
Reacher, an inveterate drifter, inherits Garber’s home on the banks of the Hudson River. This creates a crisis of identity for Reacher which is not resolved when the book ends. But no one should be surprised that Reacher is still a drifter in later books in the series.
7 out of 10.