An early book in the Jack Reacher series this book shows both author and character still developing. Overall, I found this book had too much introspection and description not enough plot/action. It's fine for books to be moody and have their character dwelling on deep thoughts, but not Jack Reacher. His thoughts are trivial and boring. He's appealing as an archetype action hero. I don't really care if he's worried about the possibility of owning a house. I want to see him outthink the bad guys and knock some heads. (Well, he usually ends up shooting them, not knocking them, but you get the point.) The plot was well conceived but fell down at lost reality in the basics of business and real estate of all things. Given how much I've enjoyed the later books in this series I'll give this a low-passing grade and suggest you skip it and move on to the later books. (I listened to this as a recorded book, very good voice reader.)