Disappointing but effective installment in Child's Jack Reacher series. This but seemed long for a Reacher thriller and might have been strengthed by cutting one of the three main plot strands. I felt that Child made it more confusing than necessary and could have shored up the suspense with tipping his hand a little more. Starts off great, but we've seen some of the same elements in Killing Floor, Die Trying and Echo Burning. But still, nobody does hardcore, bad-ass loner fiction like Child. This is a must for fans of the series, newbies would be better off reading one of the books I mention above.

Jack Reacher, the ex-Army MP protagonist in Lee Child's long-running series, knows what duty means. He understands a soldier's duty to his country, but he also knows that duty runs two ways. One's country---and its leaders, politicians, and citizens---has a duty to its soldier. More often than not, Reacher believes, that duty is forgotten, and when that happens---when a soldier feels that he has nothing to gain from serving a corrupt country with a corrupt ideology---he starts to feel that he has nothing to lose, as well. "Nothing To Lose", the twelfth novel in the Reacher series, is Child's most blatant commentary on the Bush-era Iraq War, but it never comes across as too preachy or, in any way, an outright castigation of the Bush Administration. Child knows that the secret to good writing is the age-old axiom "show, don't tell." He knows that he doesn't have to tell the reader how ugly or pointless the war is, or how mistreated our soldiers are by our own government. Like any good writer, Child makes his point by simply creating a good story. The "message" within the story never becomes the focus, and it never gets in the way of the story.In "Nothing To Lose", we find Reacher hitch-hiking through Colorado, and he literally finds himself walking the line between Hope and Despair. Hope, Colorado and Despair, Colorado are two small neighboring suburban cities, but, as their names imply, they are as different as night and day. In the town of Despair, a weary Reacher walks into a diner and is denied a cup of coffee. Minutes later, the sheriff and several deputies arrive to kick him out of town for "vagrancy". They drop him off at the Hope city limits, where the Hope police chief, a woman named Vaughn, is waiting to pick him up. Unlike the Despair cops, she's friendly enough. She drops him off at the diner in Hope and tells him an interesting story.Despair, she tells him, is a company town. It's a huge steel recycling plant---the largest in the country, actually---that employs over half the town, while the other half works for the smaller businesses that are kept afloat by the factory workers. The plant and the town is owned by the richest man in the region, a man named Thurman. He's also the town's fire-and-brimstone preacher at the End Times Church, the only church in town. The people in Despair don't like strangers.She tells Reacher to leave it alone, but Reacher doesn't like being kicked out of towns for no good reasons. He also likes a good mystery. Like: why do so many of the people in Despair look physically ill? Why is there an Army installation attached to the factory? And why does a a plane take off and arrive hours later every night from Thurman's hangar? Where is it going and what is it carrying? When he decides to cross the city limits back into Despair to find out, he literally stumbles over a body. Now, Reacher has a real murder mystery to solve. And a townful of secrets to uncover."Nothing to Lose" is Child's most engrossing and suspenseful thriller yet. It unfolds slowly, but it never unfolds in ways one would expect. It is also thought-provoking and moving in parts, as Child shows the reader the ugly aftermath of war and the all-too-human human costs of war.

Jack Reacher novels are usually a fun read. In my experience never believable and shouldn't be taken seriously. Just enjoy the story. In this outing Reacher is hitchhiking from Maine to San Diego. Why? He wants to go from the northeast corner of the country to the southwest. He is not attempting to follow a straight line from one corner of the country to the other. In Colorado he stops in the town of Hope. After a few days he is ready to move on but decides to take a small detour.He has seen Hope and now he wants to see Despair. All he wants is a cup of coffee. Instead he is confronted by four men, thrown in jail, and kicked out of town on a vagrancy charge. There is a metaphorical and physical line that divides the small towns of Hope and Despair. Back in Hope after being kicked out of Despair he meets an attractive policewoman. In Lee Child books there is always an attractive female member of law enforcement in the story. He learns that his vagrancy charge is not unique and visitors are not welcome in Despair. In Hope there are currently two women waiting on boyfriends / husbands who went to Despair and have not been heard from since. Despair is a company town and home to a large metal recycling plant. There is a connection between the recycling plant and the Iraq war. The plant has a contract with the Pentagon to process Humvee's damaged by IED's, etc. There are other strange goings on. A plane that takes off every night about 7PM and returns several hours later. An "end of the world" religious" group. A FOB (Forwarding Operating Base) on the other side of the recycling plant that is manned by elite MP's. They should have just given Reacher his coffee and let him move on. But since they didn't he sets out to unlock the secrets of Despair with the help of his new contact in the Hope police department. There are many parts of the story that are totally unrealistic. At one point Reacher finds himself stranded in Oklahoma at 12:30AM. He sets out to hitchhike back to Hope, CO and manages to get back by 10AM the same day. There is the usual one sided fights where he is out manned, sometimes four or six to one, and comes out victorious with only sore knuckles and maybe a couple of bruises. I have seen quite a few negative reviews on Nothing to Lose. If you don't take it too seriously this is an enjoyable story. Not one of the best in the series but still fun.