The new Jack Reacher novel has a more complicated (and, in a way, less complicated) set of plot arcs. Jack is in a small town in Colorado where he witnesses a woman being thrown under a bus, literally. He sees documents in her purse that pertain to an event at a prison in Mississippi several days hence.
Meanwhile, a young man in Los Angeles is leaving his foster home to travel to that prison in Mississippi, while back in the Midwest an angry, grieving father is wreacking vengeance on a chain of individuals he holds responsible for the death of his son.
We figure that all of these events are related, but we dont know how or why. Since the baddies back at the prison are aware that Jack and a Colorado woman are heading their way the multi-faceted plot comes down to two simple questions: will the baddies stop Jack (of course not) and what is going on at that for-profit prison? Since we know that something illegal is going on we can guess at the possibilities. The characters are all what E.M. Forster called flat rather than rounded and the conclusion is forgone, so the principal joy in reading is to watch Jack kick behinds and take names (and figure out situations faster than we, or the other characters, can).
