Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child

Another great Jack Reacher novel. This book portrays him as a total loner who has earned very little money since his discharge from the military about 12 years earlier. He travels without a credit card or ATM card, and he has never owned anything digital. But, he is contacted by one of his old group of eight who were elite Army investigators, which leads to the tag line of the book: “Don’t mess with the special investigators.” One of the eight has been murdered, so Jack begins the effort to figure out what happened with one of the two women on the old team. All team members have moved on to be private investigators in civilian life, and while they have not seen one another since soon after their mutual discharges, their loyalty to one another remains intact. The mystery revolves around some terrorist action – the attempt to hijack 65 missiles for terrorist use in the U.S. There were plenty of bad guys, and Jack shows his usual skill at dispatching them. One of the bestlines of the book was when they confronted a woman who was working for a corporation on behalf of the bad guys, by saying, "You've been telling a lot of lies, Ms. Berenson." And the response was, "She's from Human Relations. That's what they do." This one was hard to put down.

WC Don