Book Review: Nothing to Lose by Lee Child

Nothing to Lose by Lee Child

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Lee Child's twelfth Jack Reacher novel isn't as good as the earlier ones. Reacher is always himself: the loner who walks into town and routs out the bad guys.

In Nothing to Lose, Reacher walks through the town of Hope, Colorado, and out the same highway to the next town, Despair. When he arrives in Despair, he stops for a cup of coffee, is arrested and charged with vagrancy, because he has no job. The fact that he doesn't want to work in Despair and take away a job from a local makes no difference to the police. Reacher is driven to the halfway point between Hope and Despair and dumped to walk back to Hope.

If you know Reacher, he's not going to take this lying down, or walking around. He decides to return and find out what the town is hiding. Okay, his making a decision that the town has something to hide isn't based on anything in the book. From this point onward, it's Reacher against the town of Despair. A local female policeman provides support and a brief love interest.

Plotting, scheming, trespassing, bombs. Child throws these and more into what is more of a mash up than the type of thriller he normally writes. A reader new to the Jack Reacher stories will wonder what all the fuss is about.