My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really would give this book 3.5 stars, but Goodreads doesn’t offer that option. This is firmly in the hard-boiled loner thriller novel. Jack Reacher, the protagonist, accidentally gets kidnapped along with a mysterious woman, and the rest of the book deals with why the woman is kidnapped, how the two are going to escape, and how many bodies are strewn along the way before the ending.
Lee Child writes a taut and well-paced novel, with few extraneous diversions. His descriptions are terse and eloquent, and the plot is interesting and well thought out, with a few twists and turns for kicks.
As with his first book, there is a high level of violence and gory violence at that. Given that he’s two for two on gory violence, I can cleverly assume that this is characteristic of his books and this series.
If you like the the loner-in-a-thriller-mystery genre, this is an excellent and enjoyable series. I certainly will be reading the third book in the series.