In his latest installment, Tripwire, Reacher is happily content in torpid Key West, digging swimming pools by day and working as a bouncer in a strip club by night. That is, until the New York private investigator who follows him turns up dead.

Reacher, struggling to figure out why anyone would come looking for him, follows the murderers' trail to New York where he meets the people who dispatched the dead man. While working to piece together an elderly couple's story of a lost son in Vietnam with the recent violence, Reacher must also protect a beautiful woman from his past who becomes a target for death. And Reacher's unknown opponent is both brilliant and vicious – and obsessed with inflicting pain on others.

While the careful plotting and intelligent prose make this a fascinating thriller, it is the incredible characterization that makes this one of the best mysteries of the year. Former military policeman Jack Reacher is mysterious, tough, larger-than-life, and all the while, remarkably human. And Lee Child is the only author I know who can write an antagonist with a severely scarred face and a hook-for-a-hand without being cheesy.

Take my word for it, his bad guy, Hobie, is terrifyingly believable:

"He had scar tissue all the way down one side of his face. It was textured like an overcooked chicken's foot, but it was unnaturally pink...Brought his right hand up to meet Stone's. But it wasn't a hand. It was a glittering metal hook. It started way up under his cuff. Not an artificial hand, not a clever prosthetic device, just a simple hook, the shape of a capital letter J, forged from shiny stainless steel."

--Whitney Rose Anderson