Gaspar and Otto, FBI agents, are sent to Tampa hunting for Jack Reacher. They are to interview a former officer Thomas Weston about the murders of his first wife and three children and Reacher's investigation of it. Hoping to get a lead on Reacher, they instead become involved in murder.

I have to admit I have not yet read the Jack Reacher series but it is on my TBR pile. I have not read the first two books in this series but I was able to follow along very easily. I thoroughly enjoyed this quick read. I liked Gaspar and Otto. I liked how they were able to get some people to talk. I also liked the history of Reacher being told through others' eyes. I look forward to reading both series.

Jack Reacher short story. He was just there in the right time and at the right place. 

He helped the police and was asked to signed as a witness. 

He got arrested as a criminal. Why is this happening. 

Of course he found out why and survived what was thrown to him.

Night story. 

Jack was found, surprised by the FBI. 

He is not wanted. He was on a hit list and the FBI didn't realized it was a hit-list until the men on the list died within a short period of time with each other. 

Jack Reacher was on that list. The hit-list was found somewhere in Australia. So instead of running through the usual and slow diplomatic channel, Jack got on a plane and fly to Australia. 

He is going to take care of this. And whole on the record, he was in Australia many years ago having a low level job duty of directing traffic, that's not what happened. 

What's happened was classified. And without clearance, he is not going to tell the authority about it. 

So Jack took the more direct approach. Interesting enough, many of the Reacher story usual elements were there. Jack was minding his own business. He was in some kind of danger because of his past work for the government. Some kind of official was involved, and being ignored by Jack. Jack taking care of things. End of story. 

Usual goodness. 

Shorty and Patty are a young couple from a rural Canadian community on their way to New York City to sell off some beloved possessions in order to make enough money to go to Florida and start their lives. Which sounds like a great idea (assuming they're not ripped off in NYC) -- if only they'd ever done basic maintenance on the car they're driving. They end up breaking down outside a small town in New Hampshire, nowhere near a decent city.

The owners of a newly refurbished hotel outside town take pity on them and rent them a room for a little cheaper than they should and offer to help with getting their car going again -- they even invite them to dinner their first night with them. Yes, I said first night -- home repairs aren't doing the job, so they have to call a tow truck/mechanic to fix the car -- which is going to pretty much wipe the couple out. But what choice do they have?

Still, something doesn't seem right about the whole thing. Shorty's a trusting guy and rolls with everything that happens, but Patty smells something. She thinks a lot -- incidentally, she thinks a lot like Reacher. Which is annoying when you're reading a book starring Reacher that you get a clone. But it's good for her and Shorty and just might end up saving their lives. It'd be better for the both of them if she had any of Reacher's skills other than his ability to analyze a situation, but, I guess you take what you can get.

Meanwhile, Jack Reacher comes into the same town those two are stranded outside of. He was passing near by and on a lark decides to stop in Laconia, his father's birthplace. He's never met anyone from that side of the family, and his father said almost nothing about his childhood experiences there. So Reacher's a bit curious about the town -- he doesn't even know if there might be a cousin or three around. It turns out that finding anything about his family is almost impossible in the official records -- and there's a decent chance that there's no one around who knows anything about them that's not in the official records.

While that's going on, in the middle of the night Reacher encounters an attempted sexual assault and, ahem, dissuades the attacker. This attacker doesn't press charges or anything, but it turns out that he's connected to a significant crime family in the Northeast. Reacher is informed about this and is encouraged to leave town soon by a former MP turned local law enforcement officer that he's become acquainted with. Reacher doesn't like to be told what to do -- by anyone -- and there's something about his father's past that has him more curious than he's been before and wants to track that down.

These two stories run independently of each other, while happening very near each other. Reacher does come to the hotel and asks a couple of questions about his quest about the same time that Patty's getting suspicious, but the two don't cross paths.

Now, I didn't right down the page number when Reacher's story intersects with Shorty's and Patty's -- but I do know that it hadn't happened by page 245 (of 382). Which is pretty astounding, and is definitely a new way to bring Reacher into the main events of a novel. I doubt it's a trick Child can pull off again, but I'd like to see him try. If he doesn't show up, bad things will happen -- and will likely continue to happen -- but it's hard to say just how bad it'd all be. But Reacher does show up, and he does his usual thing, and many more people live than otherwise would have. Which isn't to suggest that no one dies after he shows up, it's just that most of them aren't the people that seemed likely to die 30 pages earlier.

There's little violence until the end of the book (there's Reacher's dissuasion, and two other minor -- by Reacher's standards -- fights), but once the fighting starts, it doesn't stop until there's a whole lot of violence and bloodshed. Tension and unease that's been mounting slowly over the whole book, are unleashed - and most of the last twenty percent (or so, I'm just guessing) of the novel is as violent and action-packed as you could hope for. Once that switch is flipped, it's on.

This wasn't my favorite Reacher novel -- by far -- but it was a really engrossing read. I enjoyed it -- and really think if Jack Reacher hadn't been the fly in the ointment for the people trying to manipulate and hurt Shorty and Patty, I think I'd have enjoyed this much more. But I expect more from Lee Child than I do other writers, and this time, I just don't think he pulled it off. I'm willing to bet he does better next year, and I'll content myself with that hope.

Reacher was on the road again. He was stopping at a middle of nowhere just to find where his father Stan Reacher was when he was young. 

Laconia. It is in the wood. 

Now he found out the he was a birdwatcher. Kind of news to Reacher. 

While not too far away, there is a motel setup to trap selected loungers for a game. We didn't find out what the game was but kind of guessed it would be murderous. No way the organizers would allow kidnapping victims to survive and call the authority. Patty and Shorty. 

The reveal is good. A bit too short for the action part when the hunt beginning and ended so fast that there isn't much time for the bad guys to tell us why they are doing this. 

The settings up of the trap is a bit too slow for most readers. I get a bit impatient with it as well. This is the few books that Reacher didn't attract any new female companion, so I would forgive him a bit for acting out all lone wolf and stuff. The part that other characters were afraid he got upset if he found out that his father might not be that good after all is also sweet. Reacher really didn't care that much one way or the other as he already have a firm image of his father. 

Read this for Door 15 book task. 

Read any book with an orange or red cover or with nuts, chocolate or coins on the cover, set in The Netherlands or Germany, by a Dutch or German author, or with canals or beer on the cover.