No Plan B by Lee Child and Andrew Child (2022) Having read only some of Lee Child's Jack Reacher thrillers (but not all of them) I'm in no way qualified to make a detailed comparison of "No Plan B" to the previous 26 novels in the series.
In dealing with this particular book, I only have the relatively few others I've read to compare it to. So here goes.....
Yes, once again our wandering soldier-of-fortune, and all around righter-of-wrongs comes across, through no fault of his own, nefarious goings on that lead to a vast evil conspiracy. And once again, Reacher takes it upon himself to seek out or hunt down the guilty parties and deliver some punch-in-the-head Reacher-ized justice.
These villains got it comin' real bad......to start out with, they throw people under the bus. Literally. Ouch.
Not taking kindly to this sort of behavior, Reacher, like Willie Nelson, goes on the road again.....heading for an bloody showdown with Minerva, a corporation that buys up and runs prisons for profit.
Of course, you don't need to guess the Minerv-ians up to all manner of horrific, vile stuff that makes them in immediate, desperate need of terminal Reacher-ization.
As soon as these slugs find out Reacher's on their trail, they deploy teams of hired goons to take him out before he ever wanders into their home town and Home Sweet Prison.
On his way to mash up the Minerv-eolas, Reacher leaves truck stops littered with broken beat up minions,,,,,,,which leads the Minervites to unleash their final weapon, a bruiser even bigger and heavier than the Reach himself (and I'm pretty sure Lee Child's used this trope before........setting up a Clash-Of-The-Titans between Reacher and some behemoth who's more than his equal)
As if he doesn't experience enough troubles on this latest highway wander, Reacher must also deal with a troubled teen boy runaway and a separate set of shady characters with their own agenda....... who favor immolating people they don't like with napalm. Ouch.
I'm sure that Reacher purists and completists will howl at the severe stretching of believability in play here, but who cares and why bother. I couldn't care less that a massive amount of foul, violent villainy will invariably rear its head every time Jack Reacher sticks his thumb out looking for a ride.
(And by the time he's ready to stick his thumb out for another ride, dozens and dozens of people involved in massive amount of foul, violent villainy will.....uh...end up rendered unavailable to commit further naughty things. Ever.)
Why else would we pick up a Reacher book? For the same reason we pick up a double beef Whopper.....it's tasty junk every time. 3 stars (***)
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