Pun Salad

Well, good news: another Reacher novel, co-written by Lee Child and his brother Andrew. This is set in Reacher's MP days. (His brother Joe is still alive.) Reacher is fresh off a relatively easy investigation involving a scheme to steal and sell M16 full-auto lower receivers to the general public. (Presumably, buyers would include gun enthusiasts, criminals, and homicidal maniacs.) His new assignment is with a team trying to thwart a pair of murderous women who are picking off elderly scientists, Roberta and Veronica. They seem eager to find out the names of people involved in some secret project in India in 1969. (That's a Chapter One spoiler.)

Reacher's team is realistic and cynical, quickly realizing they've been set up to fail, and to be eventually scapegoated for that failure. Fortunately, they're also pretty good at thinking outside the bureaucratic box, breaking the rules, entering forbidden territories, etc. And if some violence needs to be wreaked, Reacher's on hand.

But Roberta and Veronica are impressive in their abilities to evade detection while tracking down and dispatching their targets. In fact, their abilities seem almost Reacher-like. Has Jack met his match?

(Well, no. Why are you even asking?)

Do we have the stylistic trademarks of Child-style here? Sure thing! Thanks to Kindle's search function: Eight occurrences of "Reacher said nothing." Six "That was for damn sure." Five "That was clear."