Tripwire (Jack Reacher #3) by Lee Child

A Jack Reacher book is a lot like a popcorn movie: if you just go with it and don’t think about it too much, then it can be pretty entertaining. Tripwire is the third book in the series and the fourth Reacher book I’ve read, and while it was entertaining, it’s my least favorite. Not that it’s bad, it’s just not the Jack Reacher story I was anticipating. The book is more of an investigative mystery than an adrenaline-pumping action thriller.

Tripwire features a more introspective Jack Reacher, a man struggling to decide just what he wants to do with his life. He’s drifted for awhile, and now he’s starting to think about his future and what he wants in the long run. The reason he has so much time to think is that he’s not under constant threat of death, as he was in the first two books in the series. Though other characters are in dire peril, Reacher doesn’t even know about it, so he feels no urgency to act. That takes away some of the edge to the story and lowers the stakes.

Still, like I said before, it’s an entertaining read and I’ll probably read the next book in the series. I like the character and I want to find out the answers to some questions that were left up in the air at the end of this story.

I mentioned in my reviews of Killing Floor and Die Trying that Reacher often connects with a particular blues artist or song. The same is true in Tripwire, but the song is country this time, “Why Not Me?” by The Judds:

He had its radio locked onto a powerful city station behind him, and a woman called Wynonna Judd was asking him why not me? He felt he shouldn’t be liking Wynonna Judd as much as he was, because if somebody had asked him if he’d enjoy a country vocalist singing plaintively about love, he’d have probably said no he wouldn’t, based on his preconceptions. But she had a hell of a voice, and the number had a hell of a guitar part. And the lyric was getting to him, because he was imagining it was Jodie singing to him, not Wynonna Judd. She was singing why not me when you’re growing old? Why not me? He started singing along with it, his rough bass rumble underneath the soaring contralto, and by the time the number faded and the commercial started, he was figuring if he ever had a house and a stereo like other people did, he’d buy the record. Why not me?

Why not Tripwire? If you like the other Jack Reacher novels, you likely won’t be disappointed.

Tripwire by Lee Child
First edition Putnam, 1999
Printed length: 582 pages