Copyright 2019 by Lee Child. Published by Dell, an imprint of Random House, New York.
This is #24 (of 27 currently) in the Jack Reacher series of adventure/mystery books by Lee Child. I have read quite a few. But not 24. I will eventually read all of them, I think. But it will take some time.
I like all of the Reacher books. He is a larger-than-life hero. An iconoclast. One man against the world. Or, in the case of Blue Moon, one man against two rival organized crime gangs that have split a city in two: a Ukranian gang on the west and an Albanian gang on the east.
How does Reacher get involved in this mess? He sees a man on the bus with a large envelope of cash and another passenger on that bus who is clearly aiming to take it. He follows both off the bus, prevents the mugging and helps the man to his house.
The envelope contains $15,000, the proceeds from the sale of their car. This poor, elderly couple had sold their only car to pay for medical treatment for their only child, a grown daughter who thought she had insurance but had the misfortune to work for an unethical computer genius who let the company’s medical insurance lapse.
Well, that just ain’t right. Reacher starts looking into it and rather inadverantly runs afoul of one gang, then the other. What’s a lone, unarmed man to do when confronted by two vicious, highly competent criminal organizations? Kill them all, of course.
This is the most violent and unrealistic Reacher book that I have read. Highly implausible plot. An immense body count. Gratuitous murder. But still a fun read.
7 out of 10.