Lee Child's Nothing to Lose

I started this review last week while filling time waiting for the baby. With Nothing to Lose hitting the shelves today I thought I should finish it. Is it weird that I now do book reports by choice? I guess it helps when you read the book by choice.

You might be asking yourself "but John, if the book just came out today how could you possibly write a review?" Well for some unknown reason the book is published a full 2 1/2 months earlier in the UK. Luckily someone I know just started working for a UK based company and picked up what was going to be his father's day present on the trip. Of course in true Emmett fashion the father's day present was going to be slightly used after giving it to myself first for father's day. Instead it was slightly used when it was given to me for father's day. It was then slightly more used when my father in law got it for father's day. I know Lee Child is English but I still couldn't make any sense of the 2 month delay. It can't be too hard to change "kerb" to "curb" and "tyre" to "tire". It's not like it was written using the metric system and had to be converted over.

Every year I look forward to the next Lee Child novel and catching up on the adventures of the main character, Jack Reacher. There's a lot of good authors out there but my two favorite characters right now are Jack Reacher and Mitch Rapp (who I blogged about previously). When my dad told me he and my mom were going to London and were looking for suggestions on where else to go (as in other countries) the only thing that I could think of was to be sure to stop at the bookstore. I was super excited to get to read it before it hit the shelves here. Like a legal form of bootleg.

I came across Jack Reacher three books ago in One Shot. I really really liked it and in the book there was a casual reference or two to the his past and I remember thinking I sure hope there are books that talk more about that. Sure enough I dug through my father in law's boxes of books and found The Enemy. That drove me to the internet and I found a gold mine, 7 Jack Reacher novels I haven't read. Cha ching! I proceeded to read them all before the next one came out.

Nothing to Lose had one thing going for it immediately, it was longer than the last book. Not by a lot but anything will do. The last book was over much too quickly. The other thing Lee Child's books have going for them is Jack Reacher. It's hard to define why he is so likeable. He's not overly funny or clever like Myron Bolitar from Harlan Coben's novels. He's not incredibly cool and personable like Dirk Pitt in Clive Cussler's novels. He doesn't have the talent and international intrigue of Gabriel Allon in Daniel Silva's novels. He certainly isn't a national hero like Mitch Rapp. Simply put Jack Reacher is the man.

Reacher hasn't contributed much to the GDP since leaving the Army. He's jobless and homeless. A loner and a drifter. However, he is extremely tough and quite huge (6'5'' 250 lbs). So tough that in a fictional world the only guy I imagine giving him trouble in a fight is Jason Bourne. But only Bourne from The Bourne Identity, not Supremacy or Ultimatum when Jason Bourne was David Webb.

I think it is Reacher's overwhelming sense of justice that make him so likeable. It ticks him off when anyone is being taken advantage of or if somebody is getting away with a crime. He won't stand for it and he's really good at stopping it. The best line from the book came from the pretty little sheriff Reacher teams up with when she tells him "You're not a one man justice department." Girlfriend, you obviously don't know Jack Reacher. He's the judge, jury, and executioner.

Nothing to Lose doesn't disappoint. It opens with four guys trying to bully Reacher out of town which was a huge mistake, for them. You get plenty of classic Reacher moments like every minuscule detail about each cup of coffee and the vessel he drinks it from. There are 3 or 4 moments where you stand up and punch the air in satisfaction as justice is served and someone finally gets what's been coming.

I did have a problem to a degree that I haven't had before in Lee Child's books. There was an underlying theme that to me seemed a lot like European propaganda. I'm curious to see if the American version was changed at all and if anyone else got the same feeling as I did. That might explain the 2.5 month delay. The issue was Army deserters. Child didn't come out in support of desertion but his comments on the current situation in American military seemed to condone it. This bothered me but thankfully it wasn't dwelled upon.

Overall I still recommend it and anything else featuring Jack Reacher. 4.5/5