In honor of the most recent season of Reacher on Amazon Prime (and the fact that it's based on the next book in the series, Persuader), I thought I'd pick up this series where I left off. I was excited to read this one because it kind of upped the stakes a bit. So many of his books are small, local things happening in small towns, and this took Reacher to more of the national stage, where he's trying to prevent the assassination of the newly-elected Vice President of the United States.

I thought the book did a good job of bringing Reacher into the story (through a personal connection that knew his brother, and hiring him on as a consultant), which seemed plausible enough. The actual narrative where they investigate the cat-and-mouse game of the would-be assassins taunting the Secret Service and sending them messages felt a little dated (to be fair, it was first published in 2002), but I appreciated the fact that the plot was a mix of the antagonists being very savvy and also not being experts on everything (i.e., not knowing that the Secret Service usually don't share death threats with their protectees). It made for a compelling investigation, even if it was a little long.

I wasn't terribly impressed with the ending, which seemed to kind of abruptly conclude with Reacher moving on after a very brief confrontation with the antagonists they've been trying to track down for the entire book, but it was an otherwise decent entry in the Reacher series.

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Created Jul 07, 2025 at 6:54pm • Submit your own review...