After reading the last Jack Reacher book, I swore I’d never read another.  So much for swearing!  Reading Lee Child’s books is like an addiction to sweets or stronger substances—I just couldn’t help myself when I saw the book on the shelf.  And yes, just like most addicts, I now regret my weakness.

This is another ridiculous plot filled with violence and sickening behavior, but that should be no surprise since Child feels the need to pump one of these books out every year, and after the first 26 of these, I should not have been surprised that the steady decline in quality continues.

I almost hesitate to summarize the plot.  Reacher, once again, just happens to be walking down the street of a small, random town in Colorado when he witnesses a woman being shoved under the wheels of a passing bus.  Her murder begins a string of killings that takes Reacher and a woman (another plot device that Child’s is wearing out) on a journey to Mississippi where he breaks up a cabal that is using a private prison to obtain organs and tissues that will be sold to needy people. (Did you know that a single body can yield $800,000 in profit???).  The whole plot isn’t evidently ridiculous enough because Child(s) bring in a side story about an arsonist whose son died from one of those organs and a young foster boy who makes his way from LA to Mississippi to find his long lost father who is a prisoner there.  Really?  Please!

Save yourself some valuable time and just skip this one.  In reading about Child on Wikipedia, I noted that the 2023 volume entitled The Secret is already scheduled for release.  I’m enrolling in an addiction treatment program to do my best to avoid reading that one.  Not sure if I will succeed.