Personal by Lee Child

Published 2014, acquired at a book sale 2018, read July 2019, 353 pages, and another Jack Reacher hit novel!  This novel finds  Jack pulled back from retirement by the State Department for the CIA, and off to London.  A sniper has missed a shot at the French President in Paris from 3/4 of a mile.  The suspected expert sniper is John Kott, an American gone to the dark side. Although a loner and preferring to work that way, Reacher is teamed with Casey Nice, a female rookie analyst on the international investigation.  

It begins, Chapter 1, " Eight days ago my life was an up and down affair.  Some of it good.  Some of it not so good.  Most of it uneventful.  Long slow periods of nothing much, with occasional bursts of something.  Like the army itself.  Which is how they found me.  You can leave the army but the army doesn't leave you.  Not always.  Not completely."  and the third paragraph, "The Army Times is a strange old paper.  It started up before World War Two and is still going strong, every week, full of yesterday's news and sundry how to articles, like the headline staring up at me right then:  New Rules!  Changes for Badges and Insignia?!  Plus Four More Uniform Changes on the Way!  Legend has it the news is yesterday's because it's copied secondhand from AP summaries, but if you read the words sideways you sometimes hear a real sardonic tone between the lines.  ..."  it begins with some interesting trivia, historical perspective.  Always something to learn in these Reacher novels.  Another example on Page 67,   "Pi times the radius squared.  I said. Very nearly 2 square miles."  "Average population density in major Western city centers?" Which was neither math nor arithmetic but general knowledge.  I said, "Forty thousand people per square mile?".."You're behind the times.  Closer to 50,000 now, plus or minus.  P{arts of Londond and Paris are already 70,000.  ....."  I wonder how much it has increased today, 2019 as city centers swell to over capacity.  

This sniper could be one of 3 internationally known and stopping him from wreaking  evil at the the upcoming summit of world leaders has engaged not only the US, but British and Russian experts.  Another great read, page turner.  I  have only one more Reacher book on my shelf to read from the book sale bonanza I found last year, so far 11 read and not all in chronological order of publish, so I will soon be ordering more on Amazon, I have kept track of the  Reacher novels I have read.  The chronology of publication is #1 Killing Floor 1997, #2 Die Trying 1998, , #4 Running Blind 2000, #9 One Shot 2005, #13 Gone Tomorrow 2009, #14 61 Hours 2010, #15 Worth Dying For 2010, #16 The Affair 2011, #17 A Wanted Man 2012, #14 Personal  2014, #22 The Midnight Line 2017.   As every other  this was a 5 *****