61 Hours

61 Hours is a novel in the Jack Reacher series by the British writer Lee Child, published in 2010. It is the fourteenth book about the character.

Reacher is travelling on a bus that crashes in a blizzard near Bolton, South Dakota, and the accident puts him in a town that has a federal prison, a methamphetamine problem and a police department that has already lost people it could not afford to lose. A witness is being kept in the town under protection because of what she knows about an operation further south, and the book is built on the time remaining before the attempt on her life is expected. Child writes the novel in short chapters and splits the narrative between the town, the search for the people behind the threat and the logistics of protection work in a place where the weather is as much of a problem as the assailants.

The series had begun in 1997, and the books are written so they can be read in any order, with the character moving on at the end of each one.