Reacher is drinking a cup of coffee (in a styrofoam cup so he can just toss it when he’s finished) at a coffee shop in Manhattan. He sees a man get in a car and drive away.

The next day he’s asked about what he witnessed. The car was carrying money to pay a ransom demand.

Edward Lane’s wife Kate and stepdaughter Jade have been kidnapped. Lane is the leader of a group of contract military personnel, mercenaries. What makes it even more frightening is that Lane’s first wife had also been kidnapped. He had gone to the police, and she was found murdered. It appears that history is being repeated.

Lane hires Reacher, a former Army Military Police investigator, to locate his wife and the kidnappers. The investigation will lead him to a former FBI agent who worked on the first case and the sister of the dead woman.

Is this really a kidnapping? Who among Lane’s many enemies would target his wife? The answers are convoluted, and time is running out.

If Lee Child was still unsure his Jack Reacher series was a winner after multiple appearances on the best seller lists, the front page article on the June 10-11, 2006, issue of the Wall Street Journal has to have clinched it. The title of the article is “Odd Twist for Hero Of Popular Thrillers: Women Like Him, Too.” Huh? “Women Like Him, Too?” What’s so surprising?

As the article points out, 60% of fiction readers are women. It would be more surprising if his fan base was primarily male. This is no recent break-through for the publishing world: Ian Fleming, Eric Van Lustbader, Barry Eisler all have had their female fans.

Farther down in the article a homemaker from Texas gives her opinion on why women like Jack Reacher. “They may not like his love-em-and-leave-em ways, but each woman fantasizes that she could be the one to change him.”

I disagree. Women aren’t fantasizing that we could change him. We’re fantasizing we’re HIM!

Think about it. The typical woman sorts laundry, fixes dinner and washes dishes, mops the floor. Jack Reacher never does laundry – he buys all his clothes new and discards them when they’re dirty ... except for one pair of expensive shoes–which is another thing women understand. He buys all his meals and tosses the utensils in the trash. He leaves the floor littered with the bodies of the bad guys and walks away. Jack Reacher has no ties, no demands, no week-at-a-glance calendar. He’s a rolling stone gathering no moss. We’re knee-deep and rising, and it’s more than just moss.

When we read a Jack Reacher book, we fantasize that we’re big and tough and garage mechanics wouldn’t dream of patronizing us with a “Look, little lady....” We fantasize that instead of wielding a spatula we’re handling high-power artillery. As for sex: ours for the taking when and where we want.

Oh yeah. We wanna be Jack Reacher. And for 371 pages we are!

--Lesley Dunlap