A Jack Reacher novel. A former military operative who works freelance and is unusually capable of solving cases involving other operatives. Wife goes missing and presumably kidnapped. Good read, but a bit implausible.

(2006)An apparent kidnapping of a military mercinary's wife and child draws Reacher in by accident as he is a witness to the ?crime?. Actually it turns out that the wife and her lover have faked the kidnapping so that she can be free from her psycho husband. Comes to a head as the husband and his goon squad descend on a farm in England where the new couple are hiding out. As usual, Reacher manages to take out the leader and 7 baddies without any fuss or muss. Despite lacking credibility this is as always a good read.KIRKUS REVIEWIn this slick, swift, sexy thriller, it's Jack Reacher, the thinking man's Rambo, against a band of hand-picked, combat-hardened, armed-to-the-teeth, ex?special services guys, but, hey, there are only eight of them.We're talking Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, Green Beret, British SAS and the like, all now free from their savage services but never from their training. Which is to render people dead without wasted motion or mercy. They're commanded by an ex?U.S. Army colonel who has formed these wacko killers into a group called Operational Security Consultants (read mercenaries), and who may be considerably off-kilter himself. Reacher comes into contact with them all by happenstance. Sitting in a favorite caf?, sipping espresso, he notices something odd about a certain parked car¥and is noticed noticing. What he's seen, it turns out, is a car full of ransom money. It belongs to ex-Colonel Edward Lane, whose wife and step-childÂ¥Kate and JadeÂ¥have been kidnapped. In Reacher's world, however, it's a truism that kidnappings are not always what they appear. Kate, Reacher soon learns, is not Lane's first wife. Nor is she his first wife to be kidnapped. Reacher learns this from a young woman with vengeance on her mind. For four years, Patti Joseph, the first Mrs. Lane's sister, has kept Lane under personal surveillance, convinced that he murdered her sister, intent on making him pay for it. From private eye Lauren PaulingÂ¥green-eyed and elegantÂ¥Reacher learns more about Lane, none of it redeeming. In and out of bed, Reacher and Pauling form an effective team, mounting a search-and-destroy operation that eventually takes them across the Atlantic to what amounts to an English O.K. Corral.

Absolutely fantastic. I was blown away by the pacing and the writing, especially those times Reacher made well-reasoned and utterly convincing predictions only for the next paragraph to say, "But Reacher was wrong." It slayed me every time! ( )

Reacher always seems to get in trouble--this is the tenth episode of trouble. This time, he's right in the nest of bad guys and eventually dopes out the right thing to do and does it. There are only a few characters, so it's easy to follow who's who. There's one scene, in the middle of the novel, that's too gruesome for words. But, I'm off for #11 next month. ( )

Another great Reacher... I figured out parts, maybe because I'm becoming a more educated Reacher reader, or this one was a little more predictable, I'm not sure. Great read through and through! ( )