by Jim Bessey

Created on: May 24, 2009

"Nothing to Lose" - a bit of a stretch for Jack Reacher?

Novelist Lee Child once said that he named series hero Jack Reacher after the guy in the supermarket who can stretch to retrieve items from high shelves for short women. Apparently an elderly woman once asked Child if he was the store's "reacher." With "Nothing to Lose," novel twelve in the acclaimed

Jack Reacher series, it seems that the author is the one doing the reaching. He may even have succeeded, but it was a stretch from start to finish.

Ex-Army MP Major Jack Reacher travels the country alone, the ultimate unencumbered free soul. Sure, he has old friends from his military service and from his previous adventures; but Reacher is a loner at heart, and shows no sign of settling anywhere. He's entirely self-reliant, completely self-confident, fearless and capable, and often drawn into the troubles of strangers. These characteristics give the author a great deal of freedom.

That leeway (small pun there, sorry) to change the novels' settings at will led the author to choose a series of locations that seem more suitable for a Stephen King novel. Reacher, headed vaguely west and south, rides into Hope, Colorado first. He hikes to the next town down the road, Despair - where the trouble begins, of course. Beyond Despair is a mysterious temporary advanced encampment for a combat Army MP unit - a forward operating base (FOB). Even farther to the west lies the town of Halfway, once a hopeful way-station for Americans headed west through the Rockies.

Hope, Despair, a combat encampment, and Halfway - all in Colorado, east of the Rockies. Anyone remember "The Stand"?

To be fair, Reacher does encounter a strange set of circumstances that he is uniquely qualified to untangle. Despair is a desolate and unwelcoming company town attached to a monstrous metal recycling operation. The whole town works there, and its inhabitants zealously guard the company's secrets. The locals make their first mistake (of many) when they refuse to serve Reacher at Despair's only diner. He's arrested and charged as a vagrant, then escorted to the town line with instructions to get out and stay out. If you've read the first eleven installments in this series, you know that was an irresistible challenge to Major Reacher.

Reacher returns to Despair again and again - on foot in the darkness, in a borrowed truck several times, and in another borrowed vehicle accompanied by a lovely deputy from Hope. Some of these seemingly endless

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