Pun Salad

This is number 6 in Lee Child's series of novels about Jack Reacher. (Number 15 was published a few months back. Will I catch up?) Here, Reacher gets pretty close to an actual job, different from the ad hoc episodes of thwarting evildoers seen in previous books.

It's set after Election Day in a year divisible by four. The Vice President-elect has been receiving credible assassination threats. The female Secret Service agent in charge of protecting him, M. E. Froelich, is at her wits end—has she missed anything? Froelich used to be the sweetie of Reacher's late brother Joe, and is vaguely aware of Reacher's talents. So she tracks him down, and asks him to attempt to penetrate the Secret Service's protections.

And, of course, Reacher does. More than once.

Naturally, the logical thing is for Reacher (and another ex-Army sidekick, Frances Neagley) to "consult" with the Secret Service in order to counter the actual would-be assassins. It's tough, because the bad guys are ruthless and clever. (They also want to strike fear into the heart of the VP-E, so there are multiple warnings delivered, variously gruesome and mysterious.) And there are complications due to Froelich's past relationship with Joe.

As in previous books, Reacher is both a man of action and a decent detective. And Child's prose goes down like water. Although he is (surprisingly) a Brit, he clearly loves describing American scenery, from Atlantic City, to D. C., to remote North Dakota.