Jack Reacher arrives in a small American town called Despair, adjacent to Hope!  Made welcome by the powers in charge, he joins up with a woman police officer to find out what is happening at a large metal recycling plant outside town … and then the fun begins.  Jack Reacher is ace, charismatic and astute with a strong moral sense, a very likeable hero indeed.  If you haven’t met him yet you must.  Men want to emulate him, women fall for him.  I have never met anyone who doesn’t love him.  If you are new to him (so what kept you so long?) then be warned, you’ll get hooked and you have eleven backlist titles to indulge in.

Comparison: Michael Connelly, John Grisham, Stephen Leather.

Synopsis

Two small towns in Colorado: Hope and Despair. Between them, nothing but twelve miles of empty road. Jack Reacher can't find a ride, so he walks. All he wants is a cup of coffee. What he gets are four redneck deputies who want to run him out of town.

Mistake. They're picking on the wrong guy. Jack Reacher is a big man, and he's in shape. No job, no address, no baggage. Nothing, except bloody-minded curiosity. What is the secret the locals seem so keen to hide?

A hard man is good to find. Ex-military cop Reacher is today's most addictive hero. Now he pulls on a tiny loose thread, to unravel conspiracies that expose the most shocking truths. Because, after all, Jack Reacher has nothing to lose.

Reviews

'A cert to be a number one bestseller.....A version of western, of course: the drifter who comes to town, sorts out the bad guys, and moves on. ..He makes what he does seem simple. If it is, though, it's strange that nobody else has managed it so well.' David Sexton, Evening Standard

'Gripping and addictive...Reacher's stripped-down life is echoed by Lee Child's lean and spare prose.' Irish Independent

'A new Jack Reacher novel arrives as the year's first red-hot beach book...the success of these books rests partly on the big, hulking shoulders of their charismatic hero...one of the most enduring action heroes on the American landscape.' New York Times

'Follows in the great Philip Marlowe pulp tradition,nuanced with a dash of Rambo and Bruce Willis...Reacher is a moody, modern outsider figure, one of the great antiheroes...a liberal intellectual with machismo, and arms the size of Popeye's.' Independent

About the Author

Lee Child is one of the world’s leading thriller writers.  His novels consistently achieve the number one slot in hardback and paperback on bestsellers lists on both sides of the Atlantic, and are translated into over forty languages.  His debut novel, Killing Floor, was written after he was made redundant from his television job in Manchester, and introduced his much-admired maverick hero, the former military cop Jack Reacher.  Born in Coventry, he now lives in America. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation