The Affair-Lee Child

The Affair
Lee Child
Delacorte, Sep 27 2011, $28.00
ISBN 9780385344326

In 1997 in Carter Crossing, Mississippi someone slashes the throat of twentyish Janice May Chapman by an isolated railroad track. The Pentagon is concerned that evidence points to a Ranger training in nearby Fort Kelham committed the homicide as Captain Reed Riley has connections as his father Carleton is chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Colonel Garber assigns military police officer Major Jack Reacher to go undercover to learn the truth and keep the local sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux under control without her knowing it. Each distrusts the other but soon need to protect each other’s back from a dangerous cover-up as the military are uninterested in the facts; their preference is for a local hillbilly to take the rap. However, Reacher becomes incompliant when he learns Janice is the third female to have been killed by this slasher.

The latest Reacher thriller (see Worth Dying For) is an exciting throwback tale to when the heroic vigilante was still in the Army. Ironically though going back to the case that led to his leaving the military, there is not much new added to the Reacher mythos. Still the story line is fast-paced and filled with action as Reacher learns what happens to officers doing their duty with personal courage vs. those with DC connections.

Harriet Klausner