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I truly enjoy this author's style and the Jack Reacher series... I am now on book 7.... It's hard for me to put the book down once i get started... I would suggest starting at book 1 and proceeding with his books in order.... Particularly the first 3 or 4 books as there are some characters that carry forward in these books. And book 1 is a great intro as to who this Jack Reacher guy is... BTW, Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher in the movies just doesn't cut it for me... Jack... 6'5".... 250 pounds... Need I say more....

Some spoilers below, read on at own risk.

I like the Jack Reacher series. It's a predictable flow for each book, but you just have to accept that. He's a badass, always one step ahead of the bad guys, always the smartest guy in the room, figures things out before everyone else, etc. And, of course, he hooks up with some hot woman, gets into a serious relationship with her, and breaks up by the end. All that, no problem. Just accept that that's how it's going to go, and read on to see how it is handled this time around.
In this book, Jack is a little TOO smart. A little TOO good. I think it was just pushed a little too far, while other things didn't make a lot of sense to me. For instance, the knowledge and skills of the would-be assassins don't add up considering their background. Also, in one attempt at making Jack seem so much smarter than everyone else was just off-base, and that had to do with the Beretta in the kitchen drawer. Most law enforcement or military folks I know advocate that a gun being used for self-defense should be loaded and ready to fire - that extra step of inserting the magazine, pulling the slide, etc - could be the difference between life and death. In this case, the Beretta was in the drawer with the mags next to it. A professional such as a secret service agent wouldn't have had it that way, and a military professional such as Jack wouldn't have considered it a mistake to have the bullets in the mag. I think BOTH would have kept the gun in the drawer, bullets in mag, mag in gun, ready to go. Not a big deal except that the whole idea becomes a major plot twist at the very end of the book.

Anyway, it's a good book, I recommend reading it, there were just a few things that bugged me and made me think that the author was trying too hard to be clever.

When Lee Child has a worthy villain, his Jack Reacher novels are nearly perfect entertainments. When he doesn't, they're still fun but not quite in the same league. I can already make this generalization after reading only the first three Jack Reacher stories because the contrast is stark. Killing Floor and Tripwire have Carl Hiassen-level villains, horrible but in a believably surreal way, and unique. Die Trying, conversely, starred a cartoon, and the story suffered for it (it was also a book where you could tell the writer was British and didn't quite understand American extremists). While I'll read a Reacher story about the guy playing checkers it isn't nearly as much fun as watching him match up against someone with some depth. There's always a woman, of course, and Child gets extra points for making the women far beyond the typical damsel in distress. I am curious to see how Child manages to do this 17 more times, however, without repeating himself. So far so good, though...

What’s nifty about this story is that even though it’s the sixth book in the series it still ties in neatly with the first (Killing Floor). Turns out Reacher’s brother had a job investigating financial crimes with a girlfriend in the Secret Service, and now she’s come looking for Reacher to help diffuse an assassination attempt upon the Vice President of the United States. Well, this book is 550 pages long, so it’s not going to be as straightforward as the synopsis on the back cover makes it sound.

Lee Child is skilled at writing a modern thriller. It can’t just be his short, direct sentences that do it. He can somehow imbue his stories with a sense of urgency and panic. Sometimes, I find myself reading faster as if that will help Reacher get out of his current predicament. Whatever the author is doing, he’s a master at it. These are hard books to take a break from, make sure you go to bed early so you can have extra time to read before sleeping, or you’ll be sorry.

If you are reading this review. Stop. Start with Lee Child's first book "Killing Floor". This is his 6th book. Asked to rate the writing and I marked Great because they didn't have Totally Awesome. Violence rating: I put Some because a lot depends on how your imagination interprets what is written. He describes some pretty terrible stuff in his books but I tend to read it like I would an autopsy report, without a lot of emotion, just facts. Sexual content: Some, but like a PG rating. He says things like "when they were done", or "they went into the bedroom". Fine by me because details won't further the story line. Smart. Just keep it moving. His whole writing style is just a constant movement. Very entertaining.

I'm re-reading all of Child's Reacher novels and Novellas, having discovered the series at aabout its fourteenth installment. So far into the second tour I found this a decent yarn but ceratinly very far from the best crop. What I really loathed was the excessive padding of the novel with the situational descriptions. Was there really a need for any reader to be informed of the material a blouse buttons were made of, or the fare at a dinner that didn't add a iota to the plot? With this novel I reaffirmed my suspicion that Child must be fullfilling a page quota for his editor in every novel. Most writer pad their works a bit but Lee Child really overdoes it, and as a consequence the reader must plough through the inconsequantial stuff. I guess that if the straw was pared out, without remotely making the book an empty sketch, the book could have been shortened to an agile 60%. All in all I remain a fan of Reacher although by now he must be pushing 55, kind of incredible for the action passages of the recent novels, even if he is the probervial Übermensch. <grump>