Persuader (novel)

Plot

Jack Reacher is working unofficially with the DEA to bring down a boy's father, Zachary Beck, who is an arms smuggler. By pretending to save the boy from his supposed kidnappers, Reacher gains access to Beck and gradually gains his confidence by working as a hired gun/bodyguard. While working undercover he regrettably has to eliminate a few of Beck's minions to prevent them from exposing him. Reacher's primary motivation in getting involved at all in this off-the-books operation is to have another go at Francis Xavier Quinn, a former Military Intelligence agent who brutally mutilated and murdered a female military colleague of Reacher's ten years before. Reacher had originally presumed Quinn to be deceased after their last little encounter but eventually found that assumption to be incorrect after running into Quinn in public. It's ten years later and Quinn somehow just happens to be Zachary Beck's boss in a supremely lucrative, international gun-running enterprise. As always, it is Reacher's all-consuming obsession with revenge, or at least with his personal interpretation of doling out justice, which pushes him far beyond the normal boundaries of physical endurance and acceptable risk.

Critical reception

Leslie Doran of The Denver Post said that the novel had a "gripping and suspenseful opening" and that "for returning Reacher fans...beginning scenes will cause extra suspense". Patrick Anderson of The Washington Post described it as "a skillful blend of sex, violence, sadism, weaponry, spies, smuggling, revenge, deception, suspense and nonstop action", though he also notes that the novel has "several premises that are hard to swallow". After a short description of how quickly he read through the earlier books in the series after reading Persuader, Dale Jones of The Gazette simply stated "You might say I liked it".