Running Blind is the fourth novel in Lee Child's series featuring tough guy detective-at-large Jack Reacher. Child's newest Reacher novel One Shot is going to be released in June. (I reviewed the fifth novel, Echo Burning, last October for Blogcritics. I reviewed the most recent novel, The Enemy last July).

At the beginning of Running Blind, Reacher has a house on the Hudson and a great girlfriend. Reacher had grown up in the Army, and had joined the Army and served in the military police. He left when Army consolidated its resources after the end of Cold War, and has become a wanderer, whose experience and skill bring him into the investigation of crimes. wherever he roams. Reacher is really a brilliant creation—Child can insert him into law enforcement procedural scenarios anywhere in the United States or anywhere the American Army is, or has been present. Child seems to have fun with the research, because his novels are full of procedural and technical details about law enforcement. Reacher's military experience lets him call guys he knew for favours, which brings resources into play when he needs something—a neat device which works well, although it might get stale in time.

The novel starts with a fight when Reacher appoints himself to beat up a couple of thugs working a protection racket in a restaurant where he happens to be dining. Then Reacher is picked up by the FBI and questioned about the deaths of two women that he had known in the military. He had known the women when they had been sexually assaulted or harassed, and he had investigated the cases. The FBI agents are profilers, and they suggest that he fits the profile. He isn't the guy—and they know it, but they are trying intimidation, mind games and some sleazy tricks to get him on board. He plays along, on his own terms, which brings him inside the FBI facility at Quantico (which is hallowed ground, of course, to the fans of Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series). Child and Reacher are skeptical about solving crimes by divining the motives of serial killers. This is consistent with Reacher's detachment from the structures of government and power.