The first half of the book is a bit slow but it goes nonstop for the second half.
Reacher gets picked up hitchhiking by a woman who eventually confesses she needs his help. Like most Reacher books he obliges and people start dying. ( )

Good read; much too long!

(2001)Jack Reacher is picked up while hitch hiking in Texas by a woman who wants to hire him to kill her abusive husband. Turns out it is not as clear cut as it seems and Jack is drawn into a legal battle involving the woman, her daughter and the husband who turns up murdered. The woman would be the obvious suspect but Jack doesn't believe this despite the preponderance of evidence. Turns out that the husband was part of a trio of old-time friends who was a witness to something that will ruin one of those three's career as a politician/judge and had to be eliminated.(PW) Jack Reacher, the vagabond freelance lawman who never hesitates to stick his nose into private business, takes his lively act to Texas, embroiling himself in what starts as a messy domestic dispute before turning far more ominous. The rugged former army cop comes to the aid of Carmen Greer, who picks him up on the side of the road one morning outside Lubbock, then asks him to kill her abusive husband. Sloop Greer is getting out of prison in a few days, and Carmen fears he will start beating her again. Reacher declines, but agrees to protect Carmen, hiring on as a cowhand at the couple's remote ranch in Echo County, Tex., far outside Pecos. Within hours of Sloop's return from prison, where he was serving time for tax evasion, violence strikes. But the victim isn't Carmen; it's Sloop. He's found shot dead, and Carmen is arrested. End of story? Hardly. Most wandering heroes would move on at this point, but not Reacher. He begins taking a hard look at both Carmen and Sloop's past, as well as local history. What he finds ugly secrets, human suffering, political evil is repulsive to a man who's been around as many blocks as Reacher. Child (Running Blind; Tripwire) has developed a fine franchise with Reacher, who comes from the Robin Hood mold, but has enough personal quirks and moments of unusual insight to separate him from the pack. Set in a literally and figuratively smoldering landscape, this is a clean, infectious story that taps deeply into two troubling human emotions the psychology of abuse and the desire for retribution. Author tour. (July)Forecast: Reacher's fifth adventure a BOMC, Literary Guild, Mystery Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection is among his strongest, and should hook even those who haven't read the other novels in the series.

Reacher is back! ...and engaged in a domestic dispute? This is not your typical high stakes Reacher novel. Instead it's filled with bigoted, small town whites, and a pro bono, lesbian attorney from New York. It's your all-too-predictible hollywood song and dance of big city morals overcoming the evil, rural, backwards... etc.,

The setting is the best part, as it's not often Reacher is in the Texas desert, but that's only enough to carry it until the part where the attorney actually lends Reacher (a complete stranger) her car indefinitely, after only briefly meeting him for the first time.

The overall series is decent, but skip this dud. ( )

I have been leery of the Reacher series ever since I read the one where Reacher was self-described as looking like a condom stuffed with walnuts, an image so outrageously revolting it turned me off the character. Another negative is the idea, not quite so prevalent in this earlier book, is the idea that if you determine you are in the right, then whatever actions you might wish to take are justified. The Hell with the law and the legal system; you're right so violence of any kind is justified. Were that kind of vigilantism be permitted by society, there would be no more civil society because each individual would determine his own "right." It would be one big free-for-all.

That being said, this book had far less of that mind-set than the later works and especially the movies. Reacher doesn't want to be in the situation, things are not as they seem, and there is far less of the usual Reacher misogyny, so I rather enjoyed this book. ( )