NOTHING TO LOSE

NOTHING TO LOSE
by Lee Child
Batam Dell/Random House
New York, NY
www.randomhouse.com
ISBN: 9780385340564

Drifter Jack Reacher travels the country with the clothes on his back and a fold-up toothbrush and ATM card in his pocket. Reacher’s goal is to cross America diagonally, beginning in Calais, Maine and ending in San Diego, California. Taking buses and hitching when he has to, the trip proves uneventful until he leaves the small town of Hope, Colorado and walks to Despair, the next town over. Stopping in a diner for a cup of coffee, Reacher is refused service and ordered out of town by the cops. This gets Reacher’s back up and when he refuses to leave, he’s arrested as a vagrant, escorted out of town and told never to come back. On the way back to Hope, he stumbles over the body of a dead man and the ex military cop in Reacher suspects the man’s death has something to do with Despair. So, over the next few days, Reacher, with the aid of a female cop in Hope, investigates why Despair has a no-visitors policy, what’s going on with the town’s metal recycling plant with an impregnable fence, and why young men are disappearing.

In this 12th installment of the Jack Reacher series, there’s plenty of action as Reacher kicks butt in Despair, diligently and persistently trying to find out what the metal recycling plant is actually doing inside its secret compound and why a military base is guarding it. Reacher is absolutely one of the coolest characters written. He’s tough mentally and physically, a vigilante seeking justice for those who deserve it while doling out his own kind of two-fisted justice for those who need it.