Nothing to Lose by Lee Child

Don't be afraid to start the hugely popular Jack Reacher series of thrillers here. Nothing to Lose is number 12, but can be read as a stand-alone. The background details are sketched in for the reader without becoming an intrusive digression to the action - you will be intrigued and will want to find out more about what brought our hero to this point.

When the book opens, Jack Reacher, a retired military policeman is hitch-hiking to San Diego. His rides have brought him to the town of Hope, Colorado. We learn that it is Reacher's deliberate choice to travel as light as possible: just with the clothes he stands up in and with a credit card in his pocket. He is not destitute, he just deliberately rejects most of the trappings of society. We learn that he is a large man, intimidating looking, with huge physical reserves, and an accurate clock in his head. Everything he is was forged by his lifetime as an MP - probably including his highly developed sense of justice, which is the key to this story of revenge and of righting wrongs.

The next town only 12 miles down Reacher's road from Hope is Despair. When he gets there he is arrested, spends a night in the cells and then is expelled from the town under its local vagrancy ordinance. It appears that Despair allows no strangers within its town limits. Reacher returns to Hope. What he should do next is continue his journey by another route, but violence has been done to him and injustice. Already Reacher is compelled to find out about some things that he has noticed are very wrong in Despair.

Nothing to Lose is full of action, fighting, and covert operations. At the same time the plot is complex. Reacher needs to sort out many things that puzzle him. Why does Despair allow no strangers? Why are many workers in Despair apparently weak and sick? Why are young men disappearing in Despair disappearing, while young women wait for them in a motel in Hope? What is the huge industrial complex in Despair behind a high, shiny, white metal wall? Why does a small plane take to the skies every evening and return every daybreak?

In his quest for revenge and to put things right, Reacher teams up with a female deputy sheriff, a consummately professional law officer with secrets of her own. Lee Child is a master at showing a wide range of complex emotion in both his male and female characters and this gives depth and credibility to his book. So does the accurate observation of scenes and the richness of descriptive detail. These touches of reality will keep you grounded as, along with Reacher himself, you slowly come to realize the enormity of just what exactly is going on in Despair.