"Gone Tomorrow" is the thirteenth novel in the Jack Reacher series by author Lee Child, and once again we find all of the familiar pieces in place. Like all crime stories, Reacher has an uncanny ability to stumble into trouble. It either finds him or he blunders into it, as he does here in this novel when he is riding the New York City subway at two in the morning. As is his habit, he casually studies the other passengers in the car with him. One man elicits interest for his odd behavior, but it is the young lady sitting across from him who for some strange reason is exhibiting all of the clues and habits of being a suicide bomber. 

Reacher novels are always solid reads, as Lee Child is a fine writer with his short powerful sentences and clipped phrases much like the way we men think. Reacher's intellectual style allows him to approach each hurdle as a challenge which will be thoroughly analyzed with the possible solutions, outcomes, and chances for success quickly calculated by his razor sharp mind in a world where he seems to think and then move at twice the speed as everyone else. 

The many fans of this series will be familiar with the setup as Reacher, now a retired vet, hitchhikes around a country he has never known. He lives simply, almost austerely, as he owns little more than the clothes on his back and the few items that he carries in his pocket. Any necessity for funds can be solved by having money wired to a local bank from his military retirement account. The lack of continuity other than his personal lifestyle allows for each story to function as an independent event with little or no connection to previous or future tales.

If there is ever a guy that you would want in your corner when you are in trouble, that person would be the imposing Reacher, who is almost a giant of a man at six feet five inches tall and weighing in at an impressive 250 pounds. And all of that power is buttressed by a lifetime spent in the military learning every trick in the book to subdue enemies, drunks, crazies, and all of the assorted misfits he ran across during his career as a MP. However, most of the time since his retirement to civilian life has been spent protecting himself.

In this story Reacher runs into a morass of problems when the woman sitting across from him in the subway car exhibits ten of the eleven indicators he has learned which imply that someone is a suicide bomber. Hoping to abort this, he approaches her and offers help, claiming he is a cop, but she instead pulls out a pistol and blows her brains out. The train pulls into a station waiting for the police to arrive. Four of the five other passengers wait with Reacher to be interviewed as witnesses, but a fifth passenger, the one he had also sized up, disappears. After officers Theresa Lee and Docherty run Reacher through the standard witness interview, he is held for several extra hours without explanation.

Several hours later late at night four "suits," some of whom look like they have a military background, file in to interview him, and then another group of suits accosts him outside the station. They all want to know the same thing, which is whether Susan Mark, the victim, said anything to him or passed anything to him before she killed herself. The police station suits mention two names, John Sansom and Lila Hoth, neither of which mean anything to Reacher, although the Sansom name rings a distant bell.

Although Susan Marks has a brother, Jacob, who is a New Jersey cop, it is clear that she wasn't traveling all of the way up from Virginia to visit him. Jacob Marks tracks Reacher down to find out about the circumstances surrounding his sister's death, but he cannot believe that she committed suicide. Reacher ascertains from him that she worked at a low security level job in the Pentagon, but all indications lead him to suspect that she was carrying secret information of some kind. To whom and for what reason, he does not know. 

Readers familiar with Child's Jack Reacher novels know that his computer like mind will sort through all of the possibilities to arrive at one or more logical conclusions. His research will evidence from public records that John Sansom, a Congressman from North Carolina who is currently campaigning for a US Senate seat, was a highly decorated Major in the US Army and a member of the secretive Delta Corps. Sansom's campaign manager will turn out to be another member of the Deltas and a man as lethal as Reacher in a story that will also introduce a deadly Mata Hari type and her coterie of thugs who play for keeps with murder, kidnaping, bribery, torture, and extortion only a few of the games they play. 

Lee Child is the author of thirteen Jack Reacher thrillers. His debut novel, "Killing Floor," won both the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Mystery, and "The Enemy" won both the Barry and Nero awards for Best Novel. His number one bestsellers include this novel, "Bad Luck and Trouble," and "Nothing to Lose." Child, a native of England and a former television director, lives in New York City, where he is at work on his next thriller. 2009, Delacorte Press, 432 pages.