Tripwire is the third book in author Lee Child’s series centered on the character of Jack Reacher. The books in the series really stand on their own, as each takes place in a different location with different characters other than the lead. After reading Tripwire, I’m not sure if that will be the case going forward. What I was expecting to happen didn’t, and that might change Jack Reacher from here on out.

Reacher has drifted down to Key West, where he’s landed a job digging pools during the day and working as a bouncer for a strip club at night. His nest egg dwindled down throughout his drifting around, and he’s trying to replenish it. While at the bar, a private investigator comes looking for him. Reacher lies and says his name isn’t Jack Reacher. The name of the person looking for him doesn’t ring a bell. Later on, he finds the private investigator murdered, and Reacher knows he’s in danger.

He heads to New York to find out who the investigator was working for and ends up at the home of his old friend General Garber. Reacher has arrived just as Garber’s daughter, Jodie, is hosting his wake. There’s a nine-year difference between Reacher and Jodie. That seemed like a lot when she was 15 and he was 24. Now he’s 39 and she’s 30 and it doesn’t seem quite as bad.

Reacher learns his old mentor was looking for him, that’s why Jodie hired the private detective. When he tells her the investigator was killed, neither of them know what to think. Jodie didn’t know much about what he was working on, but he wanted Reacher’s help. The two of them dig around, finally coming upon an elderly couple whose son went to Vietnam and never came home. Listed as missing in action, they’ve never gotten a clear answer for the Army about what happened to him or why his name isn’t on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC.

Meanwhile in New York City, Chester Stone is facing losing his business after having it in his family for over a hundred years. He makes a desperate appeal to a back-alley source of funding, believing that if he can make it through the next six weeks he will be in the clear. The man he borrows money from calls himself “Hobie.” The ink is barely dry on the agreement Hobie has Chester sign when Chester learns he has made a huge mistake.

These two stories will come together in a not at all unexpected way eventually. How and why that happens is the mystery. I figured it out early on, but getting to that point was interesting. The book has a steady pace of action intermingled with character development. Hobie is almost a cartoon villain. He seems to have no good qualities to him at all, and his appearance makes him all the more terrifying to those who encounter him. The character is a scary one, though, and once the story wraps up things that didn’t make sense about him will be revealed.

Tripwire is at least as good as the book before it in the series. I think both benefitted from Child changing the perspective from the first-person to the third-person. It allows the reader to see different angles to the story without having it devolve into someone telling the whole plan to Reacher. In this case, we know a lot more about Hobie before Reacher has direct contact with him.

I wish I could say there was more character development of Reacher in Tripwire. While we do learn a bit about his relationship with General Garber and how he has influenced him, there’s no real growth for Reacher. He’s learned to like being a drifter, and the thought of having an anchor in New York frightens him a bit. It was fun to read his thought processes about home ownership and the responsibility it entails. There’s no real surprise that he and Jodie enter into a serious relationship – Jack has found romance in each of the books so far – but this looks quite serious. I was waiting for the shoe to drop on them but it didn’t. It’ll be interesting to see where their story goes from here.

The ausiobook was narrated once again by Jonathan McClain. He is terrific with making distinctive voices for each character so that I knew who was a part of each section of the story without them having to be named. At the same time, he doesn’t try too hard to create a voice he thinks will “fit” the character. I find this hard when men try to voice a female character or women try to voice a male character. They often try to hard to be the other sex and fail miserably. McClain voices Jodie and several other female charaters in a distinctive way that didn’t have me laughing at his attempt.

I definitely enjoyed Tripwire. It was a good mystery with plenty of action and intrigue. Suspension of disbelief is required a bit, but that’s expected with any book with an almost super-human protagonist. I’ll definitely be continuing with the series.

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