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Worth Dying For (Jack Reacher #15)

4.17 of 5 stars 4.17 · rating details · 18,622 ratings · 1,398 reviews

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Compulsively readable.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Don’t pick up [this] Jack Reacher novel if you don’t have some time on your hands, because Worth Dying For is difficult to put down. . . . Child manages to get an amazing amount of suspense into the novel.”—Associated Press

There’s deadly trouble in the corn county of Nebraska . . . and Jack Reac...more

ebook, 304 pages

Published October 19th 2010 by Delacorte Press (first published 2010)

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Apr 18, 2012 Jane Stewart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-suspense-thriller, 5-star-other

4 ½ stars. Lots of bad guys for Reacher to beat up. It was well done and lots of fun.

STORY BRIEF:
Reacher arrives in a remote farming area in Nebraska. The Duncan clan has terrified the entire county into submission. They require all farms to use their trucking company and pay high rates. They have former football players on staff as thugs to bully the locals. They are waiting for a shipment of something illegal to arrive which they sell to a guy in Las Vegas. Twenty-five years ago the daughter o...more

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Oct 19, 2010 T. Edmund rated it 3 of 5 stars

I get the feeling like I’m the last person to know; I bought this book still thinking that it would be a shocking resolution to the cliff hanger ending of the previous 61 Hours.

You see I was hooked into the possibilities: could Reacher actually be dead? OK I really doubted it but more likely – would everyone’s favourite 00-bearman be crippled with burns? At any rate I thought the pundit prediction that his female counterpart running Reacher’s old unit would play the major role of this novel was...more I get the feeling like I’m the last person to know; I bought this book still thinking that it would be a shocking resolution to the cliff hanger ending of the previous 61 Hours.

You see I was hooked into the possibilities: could Reacher actually be dead? OK I really doubted it but more likely – would everyone’s favourite 00-bearman be crippled with burns? At any rate I thought the pundit prediction that his female counterpart running Reacher’s old unit would play the major role of this novel was spot on.

But no. Even just reading the blurb will tell you that Reacher is still functioning. I’m pretty sure Childs plays on our expectations, having Reacher described as “hurting” but at the end of the day he can still kick ass without flinching so one wonders why even bother trying to fool us into thinking Jack Reacher is mortal?

Instead of playing the awesome sequel card, Childs just introduces us to another Jack Reacher adventure – this time versus the Duncans an evil family of hick/paedophile/smugglers who control a local farming community with extreme violence and a gang of retired football players (most of whom are named Brett). If that isn’t slapstick enough for you, the Duncans answer to a the Italians, who answer to some other bad guys, who answer to some Iranians, who answer to the Saudis – all of whom send a couple of guys to keep an eye on the others, resulting in a small town full of organized criminals who comically murder each other (or get their hearts punched out by Reacher)

While the story is fairly run-of-the-mill for Childs, the prose is solid, and the action is well planned. The drama is somewhat limp for this story as the main characters are nowhere near as memorable as in 61 hours and other Reacher novels, and without attachments the story merely becomes a blow by blow account of Reacher pounding on the baddies, and dressing down the cowering townsfolk.

Still, Child leads the field in thriller writing, and Worth Dying For is a prime example of his brillance, I think as an author not living up to your own works is forgivable when all your works are leagues ahead of everything else in the genre

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Feb 14, 2011 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of Reacher

Recommended to Jennifer by: Stephen King

Shelves: read-2011

I have mixed feelings upon finishing this latest Lee Child novel. Slipping into the world of Jack Reacher (lots of violence and very little angst) is comforting and familiar. Child has a formula going in many of his books and for the most part, it works pretty well. Jack Reacher comes into a small town in Nebraska (but it could be Montana or Texas or anywhere else with wide open spaces and sparse populations) and discovers that something is not right. Even though he is on his way to somewhere el...more

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Jan 23, 2012 LauraPaura rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, reviewed

Worth Dying For is the fifteenth instalment of Lee Child’s series about tough guy, drifter, Jack Reacher, a former military cop, with a habit of wandering into other people’s problems. In typical Reacher style he manages to find trouble in the sleepiest of places (this time Nebraska) in a town ruled by fear of the Duncan Family.
As always, Reacher gets to kick some serious ass, outsmarts a plethora of bad guys and comes to the aid of some innocent people caught in the crossfire. For once there i...more

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Mar 02, 2011 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-fiction, four-star-fiction, miss-trees, suspense-thriller

Them Cornhuskers oughta stuck to huskin' corn, cuz they shore ain't no match for Jack Reacher! He can outthink and outfight and just plain outCOOL everyone who tangles with him. This one was very satisfying. It was reminiscent of the older Reacher novels---totally unbelievable and all the more fun because of it. Jack gets to spout off a lot of great quips in this one, too. Wouldn't we all love to be able to think of those perfect comebacks in every stressful encounter?
This story will make you w...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Al rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

...more

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Compulsively readable.”—*The Wall Street Journal

“Don’t pick up [this] Jack Reacher novel if you don’t have some time on your hands, because Worth Dying For is difficult to put down. . . . Child manages to get an amazing amount of suspense into the novel.”—Associated Press

There’s deadly trouble in the corn county of Nebraska . . . and Jack Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved, decades-old case of a missing child that Reacher can’t let go.

The Duncans want Reacher gone—and it’s not just past secrets they’re trying to hide. For as dangerous as the Duncans are, they’re just the bottom of a criminal food chain stretching halfway around the world. For Reacher, it would have made much more sense to put some distance between himself and the hard-core trouble that’s bearing down on him. For Reacher, that was also impossible.

“A model of suspenseful storytelling and an outstanding addition to a series that stands in the front rank of modern thrillers.”—*The Washington Post

“Still the thinking man’s action hero, supreme butt-kicker and smartest guy in the room.”—*The Seattle Times

“This series is about as good as pop fiction gets.”—*The Miami Herald

Review

Praise for #1 bestselling author Lee Child and his Reacher series

“Child is a superb craftsman of suspense.”—Entertainment Weekly

“The truth about Reacher gets better and better.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Implausible, irresistible Reacher remains just about the best butt-kicker in thriller-lit.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Like his hero Jack Reacher, Lee Child seems to make no wrong steps.”—Associated Press

“Lee Child [is] the current poster-boy of American crime fiction.”—Los Angeles Times

“Indisputably the best escape artist in this escapist genre.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times

“Jack Reacher is much more like the heir to the Op and Marlowe than Spenser ever was.”—Esquire

About the Author

Lee Child is the author of seventeen Jack Reacher thrillers, including the New York Times bestsellers Persuader, The Enemy, One Shot, and The Hard Way, and the #1 bestsellers The Affair, Worth Dying For, 61 Hours, Gone Tomorrow, Bad Luck and Trouble, and Nothing to Lose. His debut, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Mystery, and The Enemy won both the Barry and Nero awards for Best Novel. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in more than forty territories. All titles have been optioned for major motion pictures. A native of England and a former television director, Child lives in New York City, where he is at work on his next thriller.

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Aug 27, 2011 Jennie Leigh rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, action, mystery

First off, let's all just admit that Jack Reacher is a wholly unrealistic character. He is the American working man's James Bond minus all the money, polish, gadgets and logistical support. And that may be what makes him so appealing. Don't get me wrong. I'm a Bond fan. But Reacher is something else entirely. Perhaps it helps that I knew before I even picked up my first Reacher book that I would have to do some measure of suspending my disbelief. Still, I simply love the series. Child has create...more

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Nov 16, 2010 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Classic Child. Very entertaining, fast moving. Always an easy, fun read. Love Jack Reacher character

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Mar 26, 2013 Kate Nicholson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: wide-reading

Why I decided to read this book: I decided to read this book because it was recommended to me by my mum who said it was a really good book. i also read this book because i had read another book by the author that i had really enjoyed.

This category , recommended by a family member, was interesting because my mum has a good sense in books so if she enjoyed it, it is usually a very good book.

My favorite quote from the book is :"either you take your hand off my chest or i take it off your wrist" be...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Benjamin Stahl rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is my first time with Jack Reacher. So what did I think of it? Well, let's look at Reacher himself for a moment. For the most part, he was a pretty cool guy. He certainly has a good sense of justice, and follows a particular morality which you don't usually see in these kind of books. While he doesn't necessarily regret when he dispatches a bad guy, he always seems to think about it and justify the act before moving on. He's not a hypocrite, meaning he doesn't condemn others for being ruthl...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Jack Cheng added it

Okay, first off, I love Reacher and Lee Child. But I had problems with this one.

The crime involved in Worth Dying For is pretty heinous and we want the bad guys to get their comeuppance as usual. However, instead of facing them in fights and taking them out, this episode has Reacher basically murdering the bad guys. They might deserve it, but I don't want my hero picking off bad guys with a rifle from 200 yards out. Doesn't really seem sporting, you know? If this action were described in a war s...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Stevedutch rated it 4 of 5 stars

With this instalment in the life of our nearly superhuman hero we (almost) get an explanation for what happened and how he escaped the predicament in which he found himself at the end of the previous instalment, 61 Hours; a la the Victorian ‘penny dreadfuls’ or episodes of Batman from many a Saturday morning’s picture going. As is pretty standard, he’s been dropped off, after hitching a ride, in the middle of nowhere, which, in this case, means Nebraska, and we find him in a run-down motel with...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Mike rated it 3 of 5 stars

My father-in-law couldn't believe I hadn't read a Jack Reacher book. He gave me this one, which takes place on the plains of Nebraska (which happens to be where I grew up).

Since this is my first experience with Reacher, I have to say that it truly is a great character -- he's a bit of a sociopath, but does fight for the little guys. He is seemingly indestructible, sometimes by luck but most of the time because of his abilities and experience. And Reacher knows how to throw in a good one-liner.

Th...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Kathy Davie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: suspense

Fifteenth in the Jack Reacher suspense series and takes place in Nebraska. I'm curious as to how many states Jack has operated in so far.

I know, why a "4" if I'm not impressed? I figured it's not fair to penalize the story just because I'm annoyed. Child still writes well and the story hangs together well with characters you can, well, hate and hate more. There are aspects to that I enjoyed, just not as thoroughly as other Jack Reacher installments.

My Take
It's not as good as the previous stories...more

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Nov 17, 2012 Shonna Froebel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wonderful, as always. Reacher is on his way to Virginia, continuing where he left off in 61 Hours. Again, he is in a rural area, this time in Nebraska. He has been let off near a small motel, the Apollo Inn, in the middle of nowhere. There is one other patron at the motel bar, a doctor well on his way to getting drunk. When a call comes in from a patient of the doctor, Reacher insists on driving him to the patient's home. What he finds there set him off against the victim's husband and gets the...more

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Aug 05, 2012 John Podlaski rated it 5 of 5 stars

Another Jack Reacher masterpiece! Like many of the readers, I was also anxious for this novel to see how our hero managed to survive from that explosion at the end of 61 hours. I was disappointed that Mr. Child didn't shed more light on this than he did. However, once again, Jack Reacher makes believers out of others. It is sad to see a community being held hostage by one of the families in the area., where the inhabitants would surely see the wrath of the Duncan family if they complained or thr...more

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Aug 04, 2012 Alain Burrese rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

When I heard that "61 Hours" contained a cliff hanger that continued in "Worth Dying For" by Lee Child, I waited to read them both back to back. That was not really necessary, while what happens after the very last scene in "61 Hours" is summed up, it is done quickly quite a ways into the book. This really is a stand alone novel, and not really a sequel in that a story line continues. Reading "61 Hours" first explains a couple things in a bit more detail, like why Jack Reacher is heading to Virg...more When I heard that "61 Hours" contained a cliff hanger that continued in "Worth Dying For" by Lee Child, I waited to read them both back to back. That was not really necessary, while what happens after the very last scene in "61 Hours" is summed up, it is done quickly quite a ways into the book. This really is a stand alone novel, and not really a sequel in that a story line continues. Reading "61 Hours" first explains a couple things in a bit more detail, like why Jack Reacher is heading to Virginia, and why he is sore, it isn't critical to read before this one, nor was it worth waiting to read them together. However, reading them back to back was enjoyable, and while I liked the suspense in "61 Hours," I thoroughly enjoyed the tough action oriented Jack Reacher piling up the body count in "Worth Dying For." The action definitely picks up in this one, and Child shows why Jack Reacher is a tough guy worth reading about.

The book does pick up just after the South Dakota adventure with Reacher on the way to Virginia. However, he does not get very far before finding himself in a small town mess in the middle of Nebraska that only he can clean up. I thought it was fairly obvious as to what the villains were selling, but then I've looked into this topic for writing I've done. That didn't make the story any less interesting, in fact it made me all the more want to see each and everyone involved get theirs, and I was not disappointed. Jack Reacher dishes out punishment throughout the book, leaving a trail of bodies behind that keeps this fast paced, action packed, adventure a page turner throughout the entire story.

The Jack Reacher series is like most action movies. They don't win Oscars, but they sure are fun to watch. This is a fun quick read, and it is purely escapism tough guy action. You don't have to think too hard reading it, you just have to enjoy bad guys getting theirs from one of the best action heroes in novels today. You know he's going to take care of the bad guys and set things right, but Child does keep it interesting with how Reacher goes about doing what he does best, and you never know what kind of collateral damage might be included in the carnage that usually unfolds. And in "Worth Dying For," the carnage does unfold. This is great tough guy escapist reading.
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Jul 02, 2012 Harry rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: detective-mystery, favorites

I'm going to add the same review for all of the Reacher series, so if you've read this one, you've read 'em all. If you feel a certain affinity for the lone hero, a man of principle, of unwavering knowledge and assent as to his own actions, than Jack Reacher's your kinda guy.

Lee Child has created an unforgettable and unique character in his creation of Jack Reacher. Jack seems to implicitly understand that he is a unique animal/human running around on this planet and that in spite of social con...more

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Jun 07, 2012 F.G. Cottam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Lee Child must have made more money with this series than he could ever spend. So my guess as to the reason that he continues with it, is that he thinks the novels are getting better. There's also the possibility that like his millions of readers, he simply enjoys Jack Reacher's company.
This, to my mind, is the best of the series. It isn't so much a vindication as a triumph. It offers the trademark Reacher thrill of vicariously beating up on lethally armed and well-muscled people who really des...more

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May 26, 2012 William F. rated it 3 of 5 stars

If you haven't read any of Lee Child's jack Reacher Books, think a '6 "5, 250 lb knight errant with an attitude. Reacher is an ex-MP Major who travels about the country righting whatever wrongs he finds himself in the middle of. Where he goes, a long trail of mashed or perforated bodies usually follows. This story is set on the bleak plains of Nebraska in winter, where Reacher takes on a nasty family dynasty aided by mafia and Middle-East gunmen and (if you can believe this) ten former Cornhuske...more

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Mar 08, 2012 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, jack-reacher

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 07, 2012 Barry rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: american, crime-fiction

Lee Child populates these inhospitable wastelands with simple but decent country yokels dominated by people bent mean by the hellish weather. Oops, scratch that. That’s from my review of 61 Hours, the first part the saga. Worth Dying For occurs days after the end of 61 Hours, just enough time for Reacher to hitchhike 140 miles to the middle of desolate nowhere. But it’s a balmy, desolate nowhere. Yessiree, after Reacher stared down relentless cold, blizzards, and ice, he’s now in balmy Nebraska....more Lee Child populates these inhospitable wastelands with simple but decent country yokels dominated by people bent mean by the hellish weather. Oops, scratch that. That’s from my review of 61 Hours, the first part the saga. Worth Dying For occurs days after the end of 61 Hours, just enough time for Reacher to hitchhike 140 miles to the middle of desolate nowhere. But it’s a balmy, desolate nowhere. Yessiree, after Reacher stared down relentless cold, blizzards, and ice, he’s now in balmy Nebraska. In 61 Hours, poor ol’ South Dakota was bedevilled with temperatures of -30; Nebraska is warm enough to whistle down the highway with the top down.

So Reacher’s in utopia after escaping the hellhole they call South Dakota? Not quite. Let’s cue up Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska for ambience. Child’s Nebraska is inhospitable wastelands with simple but decent country yokels dominated by people bent mean by the isolation.

I suspect the pace caught up with Child. Worth Dying For was released a scant six months after 61 Hours and his research is lacking. Typically we’re regaled with trivia and math calculations (Reacher is fond of prime numbers) to assure us that our hero is not just a hard man – he’s a thinking, observant hard man.

If only we could turn back the clock 20 years, when Patrick Swayze was alive. It would solve one the biggest problems of 2011 – Tom Cruise is being cast as Reacher. Film aficionados have noted that Mr. Cruise is not 6’ 5”, always a salient point in the Reacher novels. Swayze could easily reprise his role in Roadhouse.

Of course, if we could reverse the clock, we could go back to 1960. Back then, the good guys weren’t nearly as efficient. It took seven guys what Reacher can easily do by himself. The Magnificent Seven? I don’t think, so. Compared to Reacher, they’re The Slacker Seven. Still if it were 1960, we have a younger Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, or James Coburn and that would solve that pesky Tom Cruise problem nicely.

I don’t think a thriller needs to be precise. Enjoy the ride. Sometimes, though, mistakes are more than just quibbles. He mentions crossing the border just south of Medicine Hat, Alberta, “due north” of North Platte, Nebraska. Due north would be southwest Manitoba. The province of Saskatchewan is between the two. In American terms, that’s like saying that Buffalo is due north of Chicago. So he confuses Buffalo with Chicago, who cares? It’s just that Child specifically mentions it a couple of times and ties in the fact that sunrise would be later at the higher latitude. These are the type of facts that Reacher would use to break the case. We’re trained to like Reacher to note these salient facts. But these “salient facts” are wrong and disconcerting.

Then again, maybe the novel isn’t supposed to make a lot of sense. The bad guys are smuggling cargo into the U.S. from the port of Vancouver and shipping it out via western Nebraska. Our baddies aren’t the brightest lot around but they’ve been doing this for decades and most of their cargo ends up in Las Vegas. They’ve had years to figure out that they don’t need to do a 3,000 mile detour through Nebraska – it would be a hell of lot quicker and cheaper to run 1,200 miles straight from Vancouver to Vegas.

I think Lee Child has tested his limits and found that he can’t rip off a novel in only six months. Skipping the work has hurt him – this is not one of his best efforts.
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Oct 18, 2011 Tony rated it 5 of 5 stars

Lee Child- Worth Dying For (Dell Publishing 2011) 4.75 Stars

Up in Nebraska Jack Reacher has come upon a town afraid of the Duncan family. At their disposal is a group of ex-football players willing to lay down the law for the right price. The town cannot step out of line without consequences. He also stumbles upon a cold missing person case that he just cannot ignore. Stirring things up will make him the target of several out of town groups and the Duncan clan.

The introduction was not fast pace...more

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Oct 17, 2011 Sangita rated it 2 of 5 stars

I pick up lee Child when I want an easy,fun, cowboyish style fictional read set in recent times with recent issues..Jack Reacher is a typical heroic character who can beat 20 people at time and still survive(Might be am little exaggerating here but he seems so typical Mumbai film industry hero). So far whatsoever I had read of Reacher ,the basic plots always had some merit and were interesting. However this is one book where I really thought the plot was so lame..How can Duncans just a family of...more

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Jun 06, 2011 Dominiek Leenknecht rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Zeer goede pageturner, in de aloude Lee Child-traditie: Jack Reacher (de eeuwige hoofdrolspeler in de boeken van Lee Child) is een rondzwervende ex-militair die van stad naar stad lift, daar steevast met een organisatorisch probleem (terroristen of zo) geconfronteerd wordt en dit probleem van de baan helpt. Een beetje een kruising van B.A. uit The A-Team en Jack Bauer uit 24 dus.

Tegenspel verschilde in die optiek qua opzet nauwelijks van alle andere Lee Child-boeken, maar bleef veruit een geweld...more

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May 30, 2011 James Thane rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: suspense

Happily, Jack Reacher has survived the catastrophic explosion that ended his last adventure, 61 Hours. (This gives nothing away for those who haven't read the book. The fact that there is a fifteenth Reacher book is a pretty good sign that he must have survived the fourteenth, although that was not entirely clear at the time.)

Jack now finds himself out in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Nebraska, still recuperating from his injuries and attempting to find a ride to Virginia. As often happens in these boo...more Happily, Jack Reacher has survived the catastrophic explosion that ended his last adventure, 61 Hours. (This gives nothing away for those who haven't read the book. The fact that there is a fifteenth Reacher book is a pretty good sign that he must have survived the fourteenth, although that was not entirely clear at the time.)

Jack now finds himself out in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Nebraska, still recuperating from his injuries and attempting to find a ride to Virginia. As often happens in these books, a small and totally unexpected incident propels Reacher into a major and life-threatening adventure. In this case, Reacher meets a drunken doctor in a bar. The doctor gets a phone call from a woman who has a nose bleed that will not stop. The doctor refuses to go treat the woman and so Reacher, ever the White Knight, compels him to do so.

Once at the woman's home, Reacher quickly deduces that the woman is the victim of domestic abuse. Once the doctor has treated the woman, Reacher goes looking for the husband and punches his lights out to teach the guy a lesson. But, inevitably of course, Reacher has inadvertently stumbled into the briar patch. The husband, in concert with his father and his two uncles, have a stranglehold on the farmers and other residents who inhabit this small and isolated corner of the world. They have intimidated and dominated the kindly folk much in the same way that the Rykers had earlier intimidated and dominated the sod busters of Wyoming before Shane came to the rescue.

In essence, virtually all of the Reacher novels are modern versions of Jack Schaefer's classic novel. Our hero, who has powers beyond those of most mortal men, rides into town (usually on a bus or in a car where he has hitched a ride, rather than on a stallion), and discovers some fundamental injustice. Often the townfolk recognize that the injustice exists, but they are too weak or too scared or too disorganized to do anything about it. Reacher analyzes the problem, steps up to the plate and deals with the bad guys thus saving the town. He then rides off into the sunset (or in this case, actually, into the sunrise). Thus far, no sweet little boy has been dogging his heels begging him to stay, although occasionally there is a beautiful and usually well-sated woman who wishes that he would.

The villains in this book are among the best that Child has created, and they have a dark secret that is well hidden through virtually the entire book. There is also an old mystery that needs to be solved here and the result is another Reacher book that you can't put down. It consists of 62 tightly-written chapters, each of which just short enough to convince you that you can read "just one more" before giving it up for the night. Then before you know it, it's three o'clock in the morning and your wife is waking up again for the fifth or sixth time wondering when in the hell you're going to turn the damned light off so that she can get some sleep. By then, though, you're far enough along that she's just going to have to tough it out for another thirty minutes or so.

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May 13, 2011 Mark Souza rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another brilliant installment in the Jack Reacher series. Reacher is hitchhiking to Virginia when his ride lets him out at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere in rural Nebraska. He finds a hotel, the only one in a sixty mile radius and after checking in, gets a coffee at the bar a few seats down from the only other patron, an older gentleman who is already half in the bag. A call comes in that a local resident has a nose bleed that won't stop bleeding and needs a doctor. The doctor is the othe...more

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Apr 25, 2011 Kayleigh Murphy rated it 1 of 5 stars

This isn't the kind of book I naturally gravitate towards. My mum bought it at the airport bookstore on her way down to stay with me this long weekend and I decided to give it a read since it was here, really what I should have done was leave it in her luggage! This was my first in the Jack Reacher series and my first Lee Child book (has he written anything apart from the Jack Reacher series, I don't know?) and I imagine probably my last. The setting in the Nebraskan wilderness 60 miles from the...more

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Mar 04, 2011 Joanna (J.F.Penn) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Full video review - http://mysterythriller.tv/lee-child-w...

The book starts with Jack Reacher arriving in a small town and very quickly becoming embroiled in a local domestic violence incident. After beating the husband for what he did to the wife, Reacher takes on some thugs sent to deal with him. The book then escalates as we find out how one family of sinister men have sewn up the town businesses and rule the place with some illegal stuff on the side. Reacher helps some of the people in the...more Full video review - http://mysterythriller.tv/lee-child-w...

The book starts with Jack Reacher arriving in a small town and very quickly becoming embroiled in a local domestic violence incident. After beating the husband for what he did to the wife, Reacher takes on some thugs sent to deal with him. The book then escalates as we find out how one family of sinister men have sewn up the town businesses and rule the place with some illegal stuff on the side. Reacher helps some of the people in the town and investigates what secrets are hidden below the surface.

No spoilers but there is a mystery throughout the book of what is in the white van that the bad guys are waiting for, and how it is related to what’s in the shed guarded from the opening scene. Finding out gave me a real chill. It added another reason why you wanted the bad guys dead.

I do like violence in a book but not too graphic. This book was getting to the point of being graphic but was absolutely justified. Reacher beats up bad guys, protects the innocent and weak and empowers one woman to take her own revenge. It has a very high body count but you feel it’s all meant to happen. The right people get their come-uppance. I think this is why the Reacher books are so popular. There is a black and white ethical sense and Reacher is almost an avenging angel, he is dark and just beats through the bodies in his path but he is a righteous man.

The setting of the small town gave the book a constrained feel. There are very few scenes outside the town itself and many are in small rooms which keeps the tension going. It felt like this could be a place in middle America.

In terms of characters, I don’t think we are meant to get to know Reacher very much and the other characters are sketchy too. This suits the genre though, it is a fast-paced action book with probably the most fight scenes I’ve ever read. I did like the guys from Las Vegas from the various levels of the criminal organisations. They were almost farcical but again, fitted right into the novel.

This is a great escapist novel and I bought another Lee Child immediately. Reacher is a character I want to see more of, I know he will always be on the side of moral right even though his methods may be questionable!(less)

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Dec 20, 2010 Alice rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: good-to-go, clue, personal-library, part-of-series

After the dramatic ending of 61 Hours I thought we'd pick up where we left off, but that just wasn't to be. Child has been experimenting recently with his style and this book had things that worked and things that didn't. Overall, this is a Reacher novel and those are good, if not always great.

The story meandered along for quite some time and it was never really apparent until the end what all the fuss was about. But when it finally got there Wow! look out cause it's gonna hit you.

For a while, e...more

5 likes · like · see review

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About Lee Child

Lee Child was born in 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation...more

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Quotes from Worth Dying For

“Reacher said, "So here's the thing Brett. Either you take your hand off my chest, or I'll take it off your wrist.” — 70 people liked it

“Enough, a person might say, if that person lived in the civilized world, the world of movies and television and fair play and decent restraint. But Reacher didn’t live there. He lived in a world where you don’t start fights but you sure as hell finish them, and you don’t lose them either, and he was the inheritor of generations of hard-won wisdom that said the best way to lose them was to assume they were over when they weren’t yet.” — 12 people liked it

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Worth Dying For (Jack Reacher #15)

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