Since I DNFed a book that I choose to be in my ’10 before the end’ challenge I swapped it out with another book. The book I did not finish was ‘Bury our bones in the midnight soil’ by V.E. Schwab. I swapped it for Lee Child’s newest Reacher book called ‘Exit Strategy’ which is the 30^th (!!!!) book in this series.

I was really looking forward to this release because the Reacher series is one of the badass ones. This retired Military Police that always stumbles upon illegal shit happening and solving it with or without the help of police or other justice departments. Solving it while abiding by his own rules which makes his road to figuring the scheme out or figuring out how to solve something a lot bloodier, where people are sometimes nothing more then punching bags.

So, Exit strategy… Not at all what I expected; The thing that I absolutely hated was the various stories playing out in one chapter instead of each chapter having its own progression. It’s confusing if you’re reading about something that happened to Reacher and then, only divided by one empty space you are in a completely different story where you’re Gilmour that has been blackmailed into giving intel on shipments and then you’re at a mine that is owned by a man called Strickland, its all over the place and in my opinion a bit messy.

When enjoying his coffee in a local café Reacher sees a scam being played out and is not going to let it slide. Following the scammers out and beating them to a pulp to get an elderly couple’s investment back, one of the scammers warns him; you don’t know who you’re dealing with! He’ll come for his money… Reacher goes back to the café and gives the money back to the couple explaining that they’ve just been scammed. In the same chapter you’ll learn about Nathan Gilmour’s predicament, after seeing his co-worker being squashed by a container he wants out! After messaging his concerns to his blackmailer, he gets a message back telling him to give whatever message to the biggest guy at the café at some address at noon. Just when Reacher walks out, Gilmour passes him and gives him the note. A mistaken identity, since Reacher wasn’t supposed to be the biggest guy, but the messenger actually croaked on the way to the café.

It’s a story where Reacher wants to help a VA out of his predicament, not knowing the full extent of this operation. After hearing Gilmour’s story, they can link the fact that Gilmour even got the job to another HR employee being blackmailed because Gilmour wasn’t even qualified for the job. What he needed to do? Rely information about incoming shipments to the guy who’s been blackmailing him. The shipment is actually looking to be a black-ops by CIA or something which is why Reacher is eager to get to the bottom of this. When they find the connection; a shrink, they decide to take her a visit. But they’re to late, she’s already deceased; someone got to her first. Only one file has been missing.

To keep it a bit more exiting I won’t be telling more about the progression only that every side story you’ll read about within each chapter they will overlap in the end, making it make sense… I knew it would make sense in the end, but I still don’t like the way it’s written. Also, Reacher was way to decent, it wasn’t as action packed as any other story with Reacher in it; which made the story somewhat boring.

I’m giving this book a ⭐⭐⭐,5 star and that’s actually with a bit of sadness because I absolutely loved every Reacher story, bit this one just wasn’t it. Almost as if being out of ideas…