The whole thing begins as Reacher sees a man throw a woman under the bus - quite literally - after which he steals her purse and runs. Something Reacher saw seems to have triggered feelings of ill will, so to speak, from some folks who would rather it not be seen - what was there threatens the good thing they want to keep going. Reacher, doing his Reacher thing, smells a rat (and we all know he doesn't react well to threats), so he vows to get to the bottom of it even if it takes him halfway across the country. While this is going on, those other folks begin to converge at the same place - the Minerva Correctional Facility in Winson, Mississippi.

In subplots, two other people are heading to that prison as well for their own purposes--one, a young boy running away from foster care, wanting to find his birth father; and the other, a man looking for revenge. This is full of action and intrigue and can be read as a standalone. I think this is the best Andrew Child yet. I squirm at a certain scene...brutal, but Reacher is still my hero.💓 Reacher and Hannah formed an alliance to find out the truth. A father in Chicago loses his son. A fifteen-year-old foster boy from Los Angeles searching for his dad. Everyone heads to Winson, Mississippi. Disclaimer: An advance copy was received directly from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Opinions are my own and would be the same if I spent my hard-earned coins.

We should find out for sure,” Moseley said. “Make an informed decision. The key is, did the guy look in the envelope? That’s what we need to know.” Looking in the envelope isn’t definitive,” Riverdale said. “If he did look, we need to know if he understood what he saw. And what he plans to do about it.” Since there wasn't enough intrigue to pull me into the plot, I had plenty of time to be irked by the writing style. From vastly different parts of the country there are forces at work, drawing a bunch of seemingly unrelated people together. Not surprisingly, Reacher is one of the key components of the inevitable meeting.

His mission is to uncover the truth. The question is: will Reacher bring the bad guys to justice the official way . . . or his way? I wouldn’t call it ironic.” Riverdale scowled. “And there weren’t nine. There were only five. The others had family. That ruled them out.” The boy who left Los Angeles bound for Winson - Jed Sturmer. Jed seems a bit of a random piece to the puzzle (but not the most random!) and his journey cross country is an eventful one, fraught with all of the dangers you might expect a young, naive boy on the run might fall into. Clearly his path is going to cross with Reacher's; it's just a matter of where, when and how it will influence the outcome of Reacher’s quest. The Jed Starmer plot line is superfluous. Take him out of the story and nothing is lost but maybe 5,000 words.But Reacher is unaware that these crimes are part of something much larger and more far-reaching: an arsonist out for revenge, a foster kid ontherun,a cabal of powerful people involved in a secret conspiracy with many moving parts. There is no room for error, but they make a grave one. They don’t consider Reacher a threat. “There’s too much at stake to start running from shadows.” But Reacher isn’t a shadow.He is flesh and blood.And relentless when it comes to making things right. The tragic tale of a wrongly convicted man. He wondered what it had to do with Angela. Which made him think of another tragic tale. One that was just beginning. For the little girl in the wallet photo. Angela's daughter. Who would now have to grow up without a mother. Riverdale shook his head. “It mentions 10:00 a.m. on Friday. Very clearly. The time, the date, the place.” There is obviously something sinister behind the machinations of those running the Minerva Correctional Facility …. How is it related to the release of an innocent man? How will Jed and Lev eventually find themselves in Winson, Mississippi? I certainly enjoyed the ingenuity how the many moving parts of this narrative explosively collided to form an enjoyable denouement. This just isn't a Reacher book. It's an Andrew Grant book with Reacher in it--or maybe the shadow of Reacher.