"NOTHING TO LOSE" by Lee Child (B)

This twelfth novel in the Jack Reacher series by author Lee Child finds all of the familiar pieces in place. The imposing Reacher hitchhikes around the USA after a life spent in the military serving his country. Now retired, he wants to tour the country that he had defended for his entire career. This wish carries added emphasis because Reacher had never been inside the States before. He was raised and stationed abroad, and he always went somewhere else while on vacation or on leave. In short, he was a stranger to the United States and its people.

Reacher lives simply, almost austerely, as he owns little more than the clothes on his back and the few items in his pocket. He wears his clothes only until they wear out, and then he buys a new set, usually at a hardware store or an employee shop where he can obtain cheap working clothes. Any necessity for funds can be solved by having money wired to a local bank from his military retirement account.

Jack is rootless and more or less directionless except that he is usually hitchhiking from one coast to the other with stops in between. The lack of continuity other than his personal lifestyle allows each story to function as an independent event with no connection to previous or future tales. 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 enters a strange Colorado town only to be attacked and then arrested for vagrancy.

Jack Reacher novels are always solid reads. Lee Child is a fine writer with his short powerful sentences and clipped phrases much like the way we 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.

The danger in the simplicity of this pattern is that while the people, places, and events may change, Reacher's modis operandi does not. The author is cranking out these novels with considerable regularity, and there is a very real danger that his formulaic approach will first become old hat and then passé. However, I will still have to admit that his novels are always entertaining, all the more so if you are satisfied with a plot setup which wears well like an old shoe. My complaint with this particular novel is that it degrades into a rather far-fetched almost nonsensical ending that strains my credulity.

Reacher is slowly working his way west to San Diego by hitchhiking across the country. He was picked up in Kansas by a traveling salesman on his way to Hope, Colorado, to visit his grand kids, so he and Reacher part ways in that small, nondescript town. As there isn't any traffic heading west out of Hope, Reacher decides to walk the 17 miles to the next town, which goes by the strange name of Despair.

Hope and Despair are two small towns located in central Colorado just before the foothills. The towns derived their curious names from the fact that an optical illusion makes it appear that the Rocky Mountains are just over the next ridge beyond Hope. However, once the wagon trains passed over that ridge, despair set in as the true distance to the Rocky Mountains was then realized.

The first oddity that he notes is that the smooth blacktop ends right at the town limits of Hope, with only an unkempt gravel road heading further west to Despair. When he finally gets there, Reacher does not find a warm welcome waiting for him. He can't even get a cup of coffee at the local diner. Four toughs, who later turn out to be sheriff's deputies, set on him. While he dispatches them handily, he is arrested by the sheriff and later charged with vagrancy by a judge. They quickly escort him to the city limits of Hope, and warn him that he will be jailed if he ever sets foot in Despair again.

An attractive police officer from Hope is waiting at the county limits to drive him back to that town. Officer Vaughn admits to Reacher that she has often picked up evictees from Despair. She tells him that Despair is a company town which is closed to outsiders, but all Reacher wants to know is why they wanted him out of town more than to charge him for assaulting a deputy.

Reacher hates to be told what he cannot do. This is, after all, America, so the following night, much against Officer Vaughn's wishes, he heads back to Despair on foot and circles the town protected by the inky blackness of the desert. He spies a huge recycling plant that dominates the northern end of town, and he wonders if possible illegal activities taking place there might explain the town's adversarial approach to all outsiders.

During later reconnoiters, Reacher stumbles across more oddities, all of which strongly suggest that criminal activities are taking place in Despair. Fortunately for Reacher, Officer Vaughn becomes a reluctant assistant in his quest of discovery. 2008, Delacourt Press, 407 pages.