Overloaded Bookshelf

This has everything you have come to expect in a Jack Reacher novel - overblown plot, extreme and unlikely violence and bravura writing which somehow makes you overlook those first two things and enjoy it for what it is. In this one, a member of Reacher's old MP unit is in trouble, and the others have come back together to help. After all, you DO NOT MESS with the Special Investigators. Interestingly, when compared with his former subordinates, Reacher comes across as something of a sad, lonely character in this one, an aging drifter with no possessions and no emotional ties. He still has his penchant for killing bad guys, of course, in this case henchman for a potentially huge terrorist plot. It's this part of the Reacher novels which slightly annoys me. OK, the guys he maims and kills are all evil and trying to kill him, but he's racked up quite a body count after all these years, and it's never questioned. It makes me think of that bit in the first Austin Powers movie where they cut to the family of the henchman having the news of his death broken to them. What happens to the family of the guy who ends up buried in the foundations of the Las Vegas building plot in this one? Anyway, this is kind of beside the point. As Reacher novels go, this is a middling one, not bad but not the best. Patchy action, some vanilla sex and a plot which takes ages to unravel and is ultimately foiled in about two pages. But still enjoyable if you're a fan.