Nothing to Lose-Lee Child

Nothing to Lose
Lee Child
Delacorte, Jun 2008, $27.00
ISBN: 9780385340564

Jack Reacher decides to diagonally see the country so he leaves Maine heading for San Diego using whatever transportation he can find. When Jack enters Colorado, he notices on his map a road from Hope to Despair, which fascinates him and he takes it. However, in town, the waitress at the only restaurant ignores him when he enters. Soon four big men tell him to leave; he breaks the nose of one of them and demands coffee, which is served. After locking him up for a few hours, the judge orders him removed from Despair. Jack decides if they put him on the road west he will keep going but if they point him towards Hope he will return; Jack never retreats.

At the edge of Hope, police officer Vaughn picks him up and tells him to forget Despair, a company town that is run by the enigmatic owner of the state’s largest metal recycling plant. Jack tells Vaughn he will return to Despair and does so by sneaking around until he trips over a dehydrated corpse. Back in Hope, Vaughn tells him a college age girl wants to see him at the restaurant. Her boyfriend is missing since they entered Despair. Jack talks to her and vows to himself that he will find her husband as she explains she married her boyfriend and what is going on next door; not anticipating that evil in Despair is killing American soldiers overseas.

NOTHING TO LOSE seems over the top of the Rockies but no one will care as Reacher being who he is refuses to back down from a confrontation; sort of like Rambo starring in A Bad Day At Black Rock (instead of Spencer Tracy’s Macreedy). The story line is action-packed from the moment Jack decides to get a bite at the company town’s restaurant and the four deputies prove they don’t know Jack when they confront him. Fans of the series will appreciate his latest quarrel that soon leads to repercussions half way around the world.

Harriet Klausner