ONE SHOT (A Jack Reacher Novel) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2005.
Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 14 hours, 37 minutes.
Unabridged.

Lee Child

Technically, this is the ninth Jack Reacher book that Lee Child has published, but since Lee Child doesn't write the books "in order" there are two broad time periods that Jack Reacher novels occur in: 1) In the Army, 2) post-Army. This is post-army book. It is also the book that inspired the first Tom Cruise Jack Reacher movie, but if you have seen the movie you can read this book and have an entirely different experience. It inspired the movie, the movie didn't follow it too closely.

Reacher doesn't appear for the first hour and ten minutes of this audiobook. Instead, the readers are witness to a mass shooting in southern Indiana that draws Reacher from Florida because he knew the accused shooter in the Army. Once he arrives, Reacher immediately knows that something off and finds himself in a rare moral quandary. But, Reacher figures out how to proceed once it becomes obvious that someone really wants him to leave Indiana...

I have often wondered when Jack Reacher was going to have an adventure in my native Hoosier state - he goes through it as he wanders America, but never seems to stop. I can't tell if Lee Child, a Brit, actually visited Indiana to research this book - he certainly picks on the presence of the limestone quarries that run through southwest Indiana throughout the book. My guess is that this book is set in Evansville or a fictional hybrid of Evansville, Vincennes and Bedford.

So, how is the story? It's a pretty good mystery that takes a hard surprise turn in the first third of the book and had this reader wondering how all of the little pieces clicked into place until the last few minutes of the audiobook. In that sense, it was a success. But, it moved fairly slowly. This audiobook is 14+ hours long. Editing out an hour would have helped it move along nicely.

Dick Hill read the audiobook. He is my all-time favorite audiobook reader and he is the reason that I quit reading this series as books and only listen to it as audiobooks.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found in multiple formats on Amazon.com here: One Shot (A Jack Reacher Novel) by Lee Child.