I haven't picked up a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child for quite some time but I bought this at Powell's a few days ago on a shopping spree fueled by a gift card from sis and brother-in-law Joan and Mickey. I won't try to explain Jack Reacher in detail if you haven't met him, but briefly he is ex-military, managed an elite unit of the military police and now lives an itinerant life free of belongings and personal attachments. He hitches a ride on a tour bus carrying a couple dozen elderly folk towards Mt. Rushmore on a Dakota's winter day when a patch of ice changes course for him. The bus is wrecked and the passenger's all become stranded in the small town of Bolton, SD, by a blizzard. The deputy sheriff first interrogates Reacher and then begins to use him in helping the town deal with protection of their only witness to a drug buy. She is a retired Oxford and Yale university librarian and Reacher befriends her as he joins in trying to protect her from a hit contracted by Mexican drug king pin, Plato. The drug dealers are based at an abandoned Air Force facility outside of town and they are selling huge quantities of methamphetamine, so it is assumed that there must be some subterranean facilities that are being used as a lab. But then the gang up and leaves town, and an examination of the site reveals only a mysteriously locked small stone building. Reacher contacts his successor back in Virginia to gather intel and begins a conversation he may want to pursue after this is all over. The brutal cold becomes a character in its own right and threatens to kill Reacher if someone else doesn't get there first. No one is to be trusted in this town because big money and very scarey people are calling the shots from Mexico. Although there's a hint early on that something is not as it seems, the ending will still surprise most readers. This is a tightly crafted and suspenseful tale well worth reading whether or not you are familiar with the series.
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