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reviewed A Wanted Man by Lee Child (Jack Reacher, #17)

Lee Child: A Wanted Man (EBook, 2012, Delacorte) 2 stars

Hitching a ride to Virginia in a car with three strangers, Jack Reacher finds himself …

Am I on the downward slide part of the Reacher series?

2 stars

Set immediately after the caper in Worth Dying For, which was set immediately after the events of 61 Hours. Reacher tries to hitchhike to Virginia to meet with the agent whose voice he likes whose name I've forgotten. Except the people who pick him up are involved in some criminal conspiracy, which Reacher figures out pretty quickly. The FBI is behaving hinky too.

The setup makes very little sense. Half-assed conspiracies within half-assed conspiracies. About ⅔ of the way through (by the reckoning of my Kobo), the author stops trying to maintain the house of cards and just transitions into the end-game where it's mostly shooting.

The whole thing is very slapdash. Now I'm wondering if the series is slowly sliding toward craptasticness. I'm really hoping there's a bright spot or two or I'll have to find a new series for my palate cleansing.