Nothing to Lose: A Jack Reacher Novel
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
It wasn't the welcome Reacher expected. He was just passing through, minding his own business. But within minutes of his arrival a deputy is in the hospital and Reacher is back in Hope, setting up a base of operations against Despair, where a huge, seething walled-off industrial site does something nobody is supposed to see . . . where a small plane takes off every night and returns seven hours later . . . where a garrison of well-trained and well-armed military cops-the kind of soldiers Reacher once commanded-waits and watches . . . where above all two young men have disappeared and two frightened young women wait and hope for their return.
Joining forces with a beautiful cop who runs Hope with a cool hand, Reacher goes up against Despair-against the deputies who try to break him and the rich man who tries to scare him-and starts to crack open the secrets, starts to expose the terrifying connection to a distant war that's killing Americans by the thousand.
Now, between a town and the man who owns it, between Reacher and his conscience, something has to give. And Reacher never gives an inch.
Lee Child
Lee Child is one of the world’s leading thriller writers. He was born in Coventry, raised in Birmingham, and now lives in New York. It is said one of his novels featuring his hero Jack Reacher is sold somewhere in the world every nine seconds. His books consistently achieve the number-one slot on bestseller lists around the world, and have sold over one hundred million copies. Two blockbusting Jack Reacher movies have been made so far. www.LeeChild.com
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Reviews for Nothing to Lose
996 ratings63 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My least favoriite Reacher book. Lazy plotting. Serve Reacher eggs and coffe at beginning of novel and itbis over before it started.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Another excellent 'Jack Reacher' novel. This one had even more twists and turns than usual, and provided us with some insight into Reacher, that we haven't had before.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Probably the least impressive of the Reacher books, but a page-turner nonetheless.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Not as good, as previous reads of Jack Reacher, but started out quite interesting. I was confused towards the end, when the explanations came and became to technical.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5what the hell. started good enough. less than halfway through, i just didn't care. flipped to the end, still didn't care. didn't finish.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Solid entertainment
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hope and Despair.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A page turner.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This is the first book by Lee Child that has disappointed me. I know there are a lot of readers up in arms about this book, but I really didn't care about that. The truth is, aside from the controversy, this book is not on the same level as Child's other works. First Jack Reacher travels from a Colorado town called Hope to the next town, appropriately called Despair. In Despair Reacher is denied service at a diner and several deputized citizens tell him to leave town. Reacher throws the first punch and is promptly arrested, convicted of vagrancy and thrown out of town. Makes some sense, right? Well, obviously not for Reacher. He sneaks back into Despair and starts a stakeout of the local metal plant that would do the FBI proud. I couldn't help but ask myself, WHY? Reacher can handle problems and confrontations that come his way, but doesn't usually go looking for them quite the way he did in this novel. If that were the only problem, I could have overlooked it. But Reacher's constant forays between Hope and Despair became boring to read about. And boring is one thing a Lee Child book has never been. I hope the next book is back up to his previous high standard.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nothing to Lose is a typical Lee Child/Jack Reacher novel. Reacher is pulled into a situation not of his making and now he will be the one to settle it. His personal code deems it must be so.
Reacher is passing from the town of Hope, CO into the town of Dispair when he decides to stop at the hardscrabble diner in the main part of Dispair. No one is inclined to serve him and the rest of the diners look aghast at him like he's grown a second head. When what passes for local law enforcement arrests Reacher for vagrancy, they are naively unaware of the trouble they've bought themselves.
Reacher forms an alliance with a sympathetic female law officer from Hope (providing Reacher the novel's love interest) as he seeks to determine why this company town that revolves around a scrap metal recycling plant and is guarded by a Military Police outpost, wants to exclude strangers so aggressively.
While Nothing to Lose provides plenty of drama, and lots of opportunities for Reacher to display his superior hand-to-hand combat skills, his courage and his uncannily accurate internal clock (which we're reminded of ad nauseum), it fails to provide a cohesive, action-driven plot. Reacher seems to continually be making another trip into Dispair to tweak the nose of Thurman, the owner of all that is Dispair, and walking out with nothing but a bruise or two to show for his troubles.
Nothing to Lose provides a nice dose of distraction for fans of Reacher, but it isn't one of Child's best. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Loved the intersecting complexity of the plot in Nothing to Lose. Scene in the diner using salt and pepper shakers and sugar dispenser to explain what was happening with different groups of people was classic. Recommended for anyone who thinks Reacher does not have brain to match his braun.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5ok, i think i'm a lee child fan now. not overly fond of the ending. it climaxes but then just kinda peters out. by pure chance it is the next book in the reacher series that i just read. (well i read one only, i think) so it referenced that but not well enough and somewhat pointlessly. the point was good but it seemed to go here and there for the point and it didn't need to. or quit going back to the topic. also the consistance bothered me from one book to the other. it was a strong tie in the last one and oh she can't get over it, enough said is a rip off and i know it's fiction but it's not true to the past books emotions. again, i think i'm a lee child fan now though so i'll be looking for more by this author.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nothing to Lose was a little slow-moving and a bit convoluted, combining a secret military project, radioactive poisoning, and an underground railroad for army deserters into a locale that included side-by-side towns called Hope and Despair. Even when the plots are pedestrian, the writing chugs right along.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Strange, almost Lovecraftian village but with a cult leader instead of an eldritch god. Most unreal book so far.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm a huge fan of Lee Child and of Jack Reacher but this was not my favorite. It was a good story but one that could have used some trimming. On the up side, I 'read' this one with my ears and the reader was outstanding.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another mystery, Reacher drifts into a new town and is promptly ejected, naturally this piques the man's interest and a crusade to get to the bottom of what is going on in the town ensues. Along the way he meets the female cop of the town next door who is the secondary lead of the story, early on the in the story it's revealed she is married, and as such I thought perhaps we could get through a book in the series without Reacher sleeping with the female lead. I was wrong, after visiting her husband in hospital they have dinner together and get to know each other, shall we say, in a carnal way.Overall, the book was good, not exceptional, but a pretty entertaining read even with the cliche town names of Hope and Despair.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Suspense .... righteous
Always doing it Reachers way with class and style - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What can I say? I am a Lee Child Jack Reacher fan... moving through the novels in order of publication. In this novel, Reacher faces off with a small-town Colorado boss on a mission from God. Good storytelling with sometimes bemusing details that Reacher seems to know... but a solid mystery, with an always happy ending for Reacher.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the second of Child's Jack Reacher novels that I have read, and much like the other, Gone Tomorrow,I thoroughly enjoyed this.Child's pacing of the storytelling balances the need to increase long term tension whilst providing the short-term adrenalin pumping moments real zing.There are a lot of strands to this plot and whilst their are some leaps required from the reader, Child makes it easy to suspend disbelief and creates an enjoyable yarn.More Please!!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5So, I actually liked this book. It broke the formula, so even though it wasn't the most exciting book of the series it entertained me more than the last couple have. I'm not quite sure why there are so many negative reviews.In this one, Reacher isn't doing any particular job. He's basically just being an obstinate asshole and lands himself in trouble. Things progress from there. I enjoyed it.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/53.5. Didn't care for the fact that the book starts with him really being a brute and a bully. The mystery though was really good, with multiple lines, the major one I did figure out on my own, but I didn't get everything, so that was good. Most people should enjoy this well enough if they like the genre, or specifically Reacher.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm glad this wasn't my first Jack Reacher book as it would have put me off the rest. I just didn't like it much. It was Meh. Too much driving around, too many plots that didn't make much sense - too long.Don't start here for Jack Reacher.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5ok, i think i'm a lee child fan now. not overly fond of the ending. it climaxes but then just kinda peters out. by pure chance it is the next book in the reacher series that i just read. (well i read one only, i think) so it referenced that but not well enough and somewhat pointlessly. the point was good but it seemed to go here and there for the point and it didn't need to. or quit going back to the topic. also the consistance bothered me from one book to the other. it was a strong tie in the last one and oh she can't get over it, enough said is a rip off and i know it's fiction but it's not true to the past books emotions. again, i think i'm a lee child fan now though so i'll be looking for more by this author.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5“So, Reacher, you're an atheist.”“Everyone's an atheist.”“No, I'm not”“Of course you are. There are a thousand gods and you reject them. I reject one thousand and one.”
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In the last Reacher book, "Bad Luck and Trouble", Reacher meets up with the remnants of his old unit. All of them had moved on into careers. Reacher is essentially a glorified hobo who move on from one adventure to the next, without forming any permanent attachments. One of his old comrades asks him what he's running from. As is his wont, "Reacher said nothing".
Now comes "Nothing to Lose". I can only conclude that either Lee Child had an off year and couldn't write a Reacher consistent with his previous appearances, OR Reacher is bottoming out and is in need of an intervention. The Jack Reacher in the previous novels is a taciturn hero. The one in "Nothing to Lose" is belligerent and reckless, and has probably committed some form of manslaughter against innocent people.
Does he uncover a criminal conspiracy? Yes? Does he kick ass and foil it? Yes. But what sets him off on his destructive course is his own ego. He enters Despair, Colorado, a town that is less than welcoming to outsiders, and gets the bum's rush. Reacher doesn't take this disrespect lightly, and resolves to go back to Despair. He convinces himself that something is going on there that is not on the up-and-up.
I don't want to spoil the plot, so I won't go into the things he does that are so out of line. Just bear in mind that I'm starting for fear for his sanity.
Others have criticized this book on the ground that Reacher has all of a sudden become political. I don't think this is true. Ever since the early days he's been distrustful of the government and military brass while maintaining his sympathies to the common grunt. His experiences in "The Enemy" were pretty disillusioning, and I can see the common thread.
Another observation: in my review of "Bad Luck and Trouble", I remarked on how Reacher is always "butting" stacks of paper together. Well, paper-butting fans, I'm sorry to tell you that Reacher doesn't butt any paper in this outing. No. He's started butting rocks together. Maybe in the next book he'll butt scissors together for the trifecta. - Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I picked up this book because Lee Child is one of my bookstore's consistently steady sellers and I feel obligated to read the biggest authors so I can amp up my suggestive sells. Unfortunately, after reading the other reviews on this site, it appears the general consensus is that the Child novel that I randomly chose from the shelf is among the worst in the series. And boy was it bad. So very, very bad, and all because of the characters. Everyone in the novel was painfully flat, seeming to lack any motivation or internal dimensions or even personalities. The story was set in fictional/metaphorical Colorado towns called Hope and Despair and alas, the ha-ha-clever constant wandering between the two by the characters was apparently used as a substitute for any actual expression of emotions on the part of Reacher & co.
The particular details of the plot were actually fine--mildly intriguing, not dull or incomprehensible. However, the pacing of the story felt worn--even without having read any of the other books in the series I can guess at the formula that probably girders all of the others: taciturn, tough Reacher wanders into small town, sniffs out something fishy, randomly decides to fix it all, and serendipitously attracts a beautiful/fragile woman to sleep with him--I mean aid him in his investigations. Much coffee is guzzled and many barfights with incredulous odds are started and won by Reacher. I'm right, aren't I? If anyone can say different maybe I'll pick up another--like I say, the plot wasn't horrid, and this is supposedly the worst of the lot--but until then, I'll consider my research complete. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Story about two towns - Hope and Despair. Jack Reacher walks through Despair and is picked up for vagrancy and driven over the town line and left in Hope. There he's met by an attractive policewoman with mysterious secrets. There's plenty of strange goings on in Despair and Jack of course has to investigate and sneak into town and beat up half the town. This book isn't my favorite Jack Reacher book.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The physical distance between the tiny towns of Hope and Despair is a short car ride and a long walk. The metaphorical distance is about what you'd figure. It's really too bad for the town of Despair that they didn't just dump Jack Reacher on the western edge. But they forced him to backtrack, and that just didn't sit well. Reacher is, as always, a tough guy. He has his usual soon-to-be-terminated relationship with a slender, attractive, female. He beats a bunch of people up. And blows a large, radioactive hole in the middle of what was a very dismal section of Colorado. If you expected anything different, you don't know Reacher very well.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I have become a devoted Lee Child fan. I didn't think this one measured up to others I have read but it was still quite good.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There's no surprise in a Reacher novel. He drifts into town, pummels anyone he likes in whatever numbers, mysteriously wakes himself up at the perfect time, and beds the melancholy hot chick on his way to setting things right. That said, it's usually good fun. This particular one didn't work as well as previous offerings for me. It just didn't seem like there was a good reason for the bad guy to be so bad, and for the town to support it. But a bad day reading Reacher is better than a good day working.