“The city looked small on a map of America. It was just a tiny polite dot, ear a red threadlike road that ran across an otherwise empty half inch of paper. But up close and on the ground, it had a half a million people.” Lee Child starts Blue Moon, his most current Jack Reacher novel (as of November 2019) and we look forward to how Jack Reacher will fit into this tiny dot on the map.
Jack Reacher starts out sitting on a bus, no surprise, and sees an old man sleeping on a bus with a fat envelope sticking out of his pocket. Reacher knows it is what you get from a bank with money and notices a man watching the envelope and the old man. To prevent a crime he follows the man and the young man following him off the bus. As expected, he saves the old man from at least being robbed but he is badly hurt by the would-be robber.
The old man, Aaron Shevick, won’t go to the hospital or the police so Reacher helps him get home and then learns from his wife that they owe money to a loan shark. The town is controlled by two gangs. The Ukrainians and the Albanians who are engaged in a fierce turf war.
A natural Jack Reacher plot but well told leaving us on the edge of our seat right through to the end.
What is amazing about this book is that it is #24 in this series and I have read every one and I am still hooked on this character and Lee Child plot and story skills.
