Nothing To Lose

No, this is not a new nihilistic philosophy I’ve adopted, it’s the title of a book.  In honor of ptfan1 , I’m reading a book by his favorite suspense writer, Lee Child.

Child has a recurring character named Jack Reacher.  In this book, Reacher is hitchhiking/walking from Calais, Maine (I’ve been there!) to San Diego, making a diagonal across the country from the extreme northeast to the extreme southwest.  Why?  Just because.  This seems to be Reacher’s MO:  wander around aimlessly and get into trouble. 

As our book opens he’s made it into Colorado to a town called Hope.  Next town over is Despair.  While it’s out of the way of his diagonal path, who could resist taking a peek at Despair?  Not Reacher.  He is promply thrown out of town by the local law, for no apparent reason.  They deposit him on the outskirts of town, where he is picked up by a pretty female officer from Hope PD.  He announces to her that he’s going back.  “Why?”, she asks.  He answers, “Because I don’t like people telling me where I can go and what I can do.”  Ohhh, now I get it.  It’s that bad boy thing.  Then he asks her, “What would you do?”  She replies, “I’m an estrogen-based life form.  I would suck it up and move on.”  Ha ha!  I of course found that very funny.  It would probably be even funnier if there were a shred of truth in it.  I mean, not necessarily speaking for myself personally, but I haven’t found we estrogen-based life forms to be particularly good in the sucking it up and moving on department. 

The book has a sort of fantasy-like atmosphere to it.  It all seems a bit surreal.  Hope and Despair, indeed.  The town of Despair is very mysterious.  It has a huge metal recycling plant…at least that’s what it’s supposed to be.  For some strange reason there is an army combat unit posted just outside the rear wall of the plant.  While sneaking out of Despair after a late-night clandestine visit, he stumbles upon a dead body in the desert.  Back in Hope, a young woman appears who asks if he, Reacher, has seen her husband, whom she last saw in Despair.  And the dead body does not fit her husband’s description, so there are two missing persons.   But it’s obvious that Jack Reacher will eventually get to the bottom of this.  Because that’s who he is!  Nobody tells him what to do!  He’s a testosterone-based life form!