Book #65 – Worth Dying For

The latest Jack Reacher novel, which I wasn’t going to buy right away, but it came out quickly as a $9.99 book. So I grabbed it. The last book, 61 Hours, ended with Jack Reacher trying to escape from an underground bunker that was on fire and likely to explode. Unlike the other novels, you have no idea what happens to him. So I was looking forward to Worth Dying For.

I’ll say up front that I don’t think 61 Hours or Worth Dying For are quite up to the excitement or standards of the previous books. I think Gone Tomorrow wasn’t great as well. Maybe I’m expecting too much, or used to the “Jack Reacher forumula,” but it felt like these weren’t quite as good as Bad Luck and Trouble, Die Trying, or One Shot.

In any case, Reacher is still in the middle of the country, hitchhiking through Nebraska, trying to get to Virginia to find the Marine he dealt with in 61 Hours. He’s stuck in a small county, controlled by a family that has all the famers scared. As usual Reacher butts in to help someone. In this case he convinces a drunk doctor that has has to go visit a woman that called him. When Reacher sees the woman, who he thinks was punched by her husband, he finds the husband in steakhouse and breaks his nose.

From there the story takes its turns and twists, with the Duncan family trying to keep their business going and remain in control of the county and also punish Reacher.

It’s not a bad read, just lacking some of the excitement and twists of the other ones. It feels like Child lets too much information our early, and it’s a simple plot, not with the twists of many of the others.