Pun Salad

I'm slowly but surely catching up in Lee Child's Jack Reacher series, a project started back in 2009. I've given up my quibbles and tergiversations about Dickensian coincidences and convenient revelations; these books are great fun.

A chance glance at the personal (note title) ads in a castaway Army Times newspaper in Seattle causes Jack to get in touch with a supervisor from his aforementioned MP days. Jack is jetted off to North Carolina, where he's asked to participate in a desperate manhunt. A sniper has taken a shot at the French president. A miss, and Jack doesn't care about that too much anyway, but there are indications that the attempt was a warmup for another assassination in a few days.

Again, Jack asks, why me? Well, it turns out one of the prime suspects was a gifted sniper Jack outwitted and brought to justice during his MP days. And now he's out, looking for work. Aha! This time it's personal! Off to Paris.

Jack brings his usual powers of observation, deduction, and lethal violence to bear on the issue. He is assisted by a female sidekick named "Casey Nice"; also teams up with agents from England and Russia. But, as is the case with every character in a Reacher book: you have to be skeptical whether or not they can be trusted. Things are never as they seem at first, and you have to sort through the numerous red herrings to find… what? The real herrings? I guess.

One character notes the combination of Reacher's vagabond lifestyle and his detective skills, and dubs him "Sherlock Homeless". Heh! That's very accurate.