REALJimBob

The next in the series, and Jack Reacher time has come around again. This time Reacher is approached by the Secret Service to perform a secret audit of their protetion detail for the vice president elect. Reacher realises immediately that there's going to be more to it than that – in fact, Reacher audits the protection so quickly that it doesn't even make it into the book, instead he briefly describes his report to the agent in charge, M.E. Froelich.

We're reintroduced, indirectly, to Reacher's brother – M.E. and her colleagues all worked with him before he died in the first in the series, Killing Floor, due to the apparent connection between the Secret Service and the Treasury department – and consequently gain a little more understanding into both Reacher and his brother, as well as their somewhat distant relationship to each other.

While M.E. is obviously the 'love interest' for this novel, we're also introduced to Neagley – an ex-MP colleague, now working as a private contractor – who Reacher initially brings in to help with the audit. She's very deliberately presented as a character with issues that aren't explained to us in this novel (she doesn't like to be touched – at all), I assume that means that she'll be making a reappearance in a later novel so Lee Child can develop her a little more. Does Child have a recurring motif of sexual assault? It was a large theme of Running Blind and now my assumed background for Neagley.

Slower than some of the previous novels, more detective than thriller. I especially liked that we got occasional single paragraphs from the bad guy's point of view, enough to tease us but not enough to class them as a point of view character. Probably my new favourite in the Reacher series since Tripwire.