20 Great Thrillers, June 2012

What initially put Lee Child’s Jack Reacher on his current mission of traveling the country at whim, kicking butt and righting wrongs all along the way? The answer is found in THE AFFAIR, which takes Child’s legion of fans back to the late 1990s, when Reacher, still an Army MP, is given an undercover assignment. A civilian living near an Army base has brutally murdered, and the evidence seems to point to a soldier who has friends in high places. Reacher partners up with the local sheriff, and sparks fly in more ways than one. The book is a high point in a series which is full of them.