Exit Strategy: A Reacher Novel, Lee Child, Andrew Child, authors; Scott Brick, narrator
Reacher is wandering again. A former soldier, he prefers freedom and to have no home address. He wants no permanence in his life. Thus, he travels from place to place, at will. He carries a toothbrush and lands wherever transportation takes him. He buys what he needs as he needs it, and often gets involved with strangers and helps them out of their mounting and dangerous difficulties.
In this book, Reacher needs a coffee fix. As a result, we find him in a coffee shop where he overhears the conversation of an elderly couple. They are seated with a man they do not realize intends to fleece them of their savings. Reacher follows the man, and later, those he is involved with. He neutralizes all of them. He returns their money and saves their nest egg. At first, they are angry with Reacher, a stranger who has just lost them a possible fortune, just for their minimal investment. Then Reacher explains. They thank him, take their money and run.
In this same coffee shop sits a man waiting for a contact who is described as the largest man he will see. Reacher fits the description, so he slips a note into his pocket asking him to meet up with him later and pleads for his help.
Reacher finds the note and chooses to meet him. When Gilmore explains, Reacher tells him that he is not the man the note was really intended for, but he realizes that the man he was looking for is no longer alive. Gilmore works at the Port of Baltimore. He has enormous gambling debts which have come due. There is a heist planned, of a shipment that is due. He is forced to participate because he is being blackmailed. He must do as they say or they will seriously harm his four-year-old nephew. They have already murdered his co-worker. Reacher decides to help him.
After he is able to help Gilmore, he wonders what might be in the shipment that could be so important that bodies are piling up and threats are being made. He decides to stay and continue to investigate. Gilmore decides to assist him. Eventually, they discover that there is a plan afoot to instigate a war between Armenia and Turkey. The man involved, Morgan Strickland, has plans to collect one million dollars for every soldier that falls in combat, past or present. He has deliberately recruited unfit candidates so they will succumb. It is a diabolical scheme, but it is so convoluted, and involves so many characters who are bending the rules, committing murders and thefts, that it gets really confusing. Former military and CIA personnel are involved. It is excessively violent and the threads dart in so many different directions that it does not always seem to make sense.
I found this book to be the least satisfying in the series. All of the characters had questionable character. They all bent the rules, broke the law and committed violent acts. I am at a loss to understand the real plot, and I am not sure that the story ever really comes together. I was relieved when Reacher began to journey again.