Reviews

Nothing to Lose (Jack Reacher, #12) by Lee Child

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erickibler4's review against another edition

3.0

In the last Reacher book, "Bad Luck and Trouble", Reacher meets up with the remnants of his old unit. All of them had moved on into careers. Reacher is essentially a glorified hobo who move on from one adventure to the next, without forming any permanent attachments. One of his old comrades asks him what he's running from. As is his wont, "Reacher said nothing".

Now comes "Nothing to Lose". I can only conclude that either Lee Child had an off year and couldn't write a Reacher consistent with his previous appearances, OR Reacher is bottoming out and is in need of an intervention. The Jack Reacher in the previous novels is a taciturn hero. The one in "Nothing to Lose" is belligerent and reckless, and has probably committed some form of manslaughter against innocent people.

Does he uncover a criminal conspiracy? Yes? Does he kick ass and foil it? Yes. But what sets him off on his destructive course is his own ego. He enters Despair, Colorado, a town that is less than welcoming to outsiders, and gets the bum's rush. Reacher doesn't take this disrespect lightly, and resolves to go back to Despair. He convinces himself that something is going on there that is not on the up-and-up.

I don't want to spoil the plot, so I won't go into the things he does that are so out of line. Just bear in mind that I'm starting for fear for his sanity.

Others have criticized this book on the ground that Reacher has all of a sudden become political. I don't think this is true. Ever since the early days he's been distrustful of the government and military brass while maintaining his sympathies to the common grunt. His experiences in "The Enemy" were pretty disillusioning, and I can see the common thread.

Another observation: in my review of "Bad Luck and Trouble", I remarked on how Reacher is always "butting" stacks of paper together. Well, paper-butting fans, I'm sorry to tell you that Reacher doesn't butt any paper in this outing. No. He's started butting rocks together. Maybe in the next book he'll butt scissors together for the trifecta.

kristenfarmer's review against another edition

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3.0

3.5

whovian223's review against another edition

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4.0

An excellent book that takes a bit more of a political stance than I'm used to from Child. Published in 2008, so I guess it's not a surprise there would be some pointed Iraq war commentary in here.

Also a slight annoyance is that you can always tell whether Reacher is going to hook up with the female protagonist depending on how he describes her from Reacher's point of view. It was a bit more obvious in this one than other books.

Still, Child is one of my favourite authors and it's nice to go back into the Reacher series a little bit (I've read from #14 onward to the newest, but am hit and miss in the previous books).

This one's another fun read, with a bit more going on than usual.

lockleson's review against another edition

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2.0

2 stars for the ending, book was 3 stars until the end.

efigy's review against another edition

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2.0

Kind of a paradox of the attempted complexity of the previous novels. Just too simple, to many mistakes that reacher doesn't do, and sudden wows that needed a bit more building up to. Being inside this reacher's mind was something taken from a classical story, not the fierce driven resolute character that has been presented before...by chance I read night school as the first novel so I'm hoping that this will be just a small novel minded character, since he clearly resumes his normal self later on the series...