4 ½ stars. Rambo, Dirty Harry, with a hint of Sherlock Holmes – fun, exciting, suspense, escape.

STORY BRIEF:
This is the first book in the Jack Reacher series, sixteen books so far. It’s told in first person by Jack. He was a homicide investigator in the military police for thirteen years, hunting trained killers gone bad. He had to be able to outthink them and fight them. He retired as a major six months ago at age 36. Now Jack just wants to wander, living off his severance pay, buying cheap clothes he can throw away rather than wash, no ID, no Driver’s License, no credit cards, using cash, being anonymous. He travels by bus and train.

Jack gets off the bus and walks into the small town of Margrave, Georgia, out of curiosity about a singer who lived there sixty years ago. Someone was killed around the time Jack arrived. The local cops arrest Jack for questioning. In the next few days the police chief is killed and someone else disappears. Jack begins investigating. Multiple attempts are made to kill Jack.

REVIEWER’S OPINION:
Wow! This was good! When Jack hears the details about the first murder, his analysis was amazing. I was pulled in and didn’t want to stop reading for almost the entire book. I can’t wait to keep going with this series. The plotting is great. No one is being stupid or incompetent – well, maybe a little by some of the bad guys who are not as competent as Jack. Jack is put into circumstances where I think how is he going to survive? But he does neat things and survives and wins. I loved what he did when he was wrongly put into the section of a prison with the worst of convicted murderers. I like seeing revenge and justice for bad guys. So I liked seeing Jack hurt or kill them without worrying about their civil rights. Cops can’t do that.

Roscoe is a female police officer. She and Jack fall for each other so there is a touch of romance and several sex scenes. The sex scenes are told not shown.

There were some gruesome torture scenes that might bother some readers, but they are described after the fact, not shown, which may help a little.

LOGIC AND COINCIDENCE COMMENTS:
Some reviewers complained that the author wasn’t technically accurate about weapons, procedures, and other things. I don’t care about that. This is fiction. I don’t require “fiction” to educate me. If it’s entertaining with good action, I’m happy to accept “technical fiction.” I do agree some things were too coincidental. Jack’s ability to guess someone’s alias and location was too far-fetched for me. Even Sherlock Holmes couldn’t have done that. But the rest was such a good ride I didn’t mind.

Jack did not have a Driver’s License, but he spent a lot of time driving someone else’s car. The local cops didn’t mention it, apparently since he was helping them. He also took a flight to New York. I don’t know if the airlines required ID back in 1997, before 9/11, but I guess it doesn’t matter because this is fiction. Anyway, it unsettled me at first, but I became more comfortable with it in subsequent books. He drives and flies frequently without an ID in subsequent books.

NARRATOR:
The narrator Dick Hill was great. He has an amazing range. He did a deep black male voice so well that I thought it was another actor. And his female voices were fine.

DATA:
Unabridged audiobook reading time: 14 hrs and 48 mins. Swearing language: mild, as far as I can recall. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: 7 told not shown. Setting: 1997 mostly Margrave, Georgia, with a few scenes in Atlanta, Alabama, Mississippi, and New York. Book copyright: 1997. Genre: mystery suspense thriller. Ending: Very feel good, a winning feeling, bad guys got it.