Pun Salad

I almost feel like I have to apologize to the Child brothers for not liking their latest Reacher novel very much. They've done everything "right": they stuck to their tried-and-true script, they turned in the contractually obligated number of words, and Jack Reacher is pretty much the same character as seen in the 29 other books you'll find at Amazon.

But this one, I thought, was padded mercilessly in order to accomplish that word count. Need more pages? Add another character, another plot complication, another fight scene, a dead body or two! Eventually you'll get there.

Unfortunately, you also get a book that is the literary equivalent of a Rube Goldberg invention.

As often happens, Reacher gets sucked into this adventure via the usual amazing coincidence: he just happens to be drinking his favorite beverage in a Baltimore coffee shop, when he witnesses the setup to an obvious scam, a shabby-looking couple about to lose their life savings to a team of grifters. Reacher resolves that with a little timely violence, but that also makes him a target for revenge by the grifters' boss.

But wait, that's not all! There's been a grisly murder at the Baltimore Port Authority! It's been written off as an "accident" by the cops, but employee Nathan Gilmour knows otherwise, and (moreover) knows that he was the intended victim. His survival strategy sounds unlikely to work, but that doesn't matter, because (via a different amazing coincidence) it involves the same coffee shop that Reacher is inhabiting, and Reacher receives Gilmour's misguided plea for help. Thanks to (more coincidences) an unfortunate heart attack and mistaken identity.

Eventually, rough justice is delivered unto the bad guys, but it takes a large number of words.