The fifth novel in the Jack Reacher series (by Lee Child) brings Reacher to Texas, near the Mexican border. He is drawn into the complex affairs of Carmen Greer, a woman of Hispanic origins, married to a wealthy Texas oilman named Sloop Greer who, she says, secretly beats her. At the beginning, Sloop is in prison serving a sentence for tax evasion, and she fears what will happen when he comes home. When he comes home, Sloop is shot and Carmen is arrested for his murder. Meanwhile a squad of hired killers is killing off Sloop's contacts.

The story moves at a nice pace, with the double climax of a bloody gun battle between Reacher and the death squad, and the discovery of who was responsible for most of the violence and death.

Child seems to move surely through rural America and manages to sound like an American, although he is a British ex-patriate. He seems to have done his homework in firearms, police procedure, court process and history. He makes the odd mistake - in one scene Reacher gazes into a box of pistol cartridges "sitting on their firing pins." I don't know if factory ammunition is packed primer down, but the firing pin is part of the gun, not the cartridge. On the whole, he manages to make his characters and story sound credible.

Reacher is a unique and interesting character. He practices disengagement. He travels by hitchhiking and stays in cheap hotels. He buys cheap clothes and throws them out instead of laundering them. He is a 6' 4", 250 lb ex-military policeman, who gets into fights in bars, but he seems to avoid police attention. He is a bit of a smart-ass and sometimes just a prick. He continually gives the names of 19th century American presidents when asked for his name, and seems to make fun of the many waitresses and hotel clerks who don't get the joke. He seems to be well read, and he seems to have disengaged from the world through a sense of distaste for the social order. Within a few pages he answers a quote from Balzac ("Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught" with a quote from Marcuse ("Law and order are always and everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy"). At the same time, he is not cynical or mean.