Nothing to Lose

Nothing to Lose is the twelfth book in the Jack Reacher series by the British writer Lee Child, published in 2008. It is told in the third person, as most of the series is, and it sets its hero against two towns rather than a single enemy. It appeared in the United Kingdom in March of that year and in the United States in June.

Reacher walks into Hope, Colorado, and finds that twelve miles of empty road separate it from Despair. All he wants is a cup of coffee, and he is treated as an unwanted stranger by people who have something to hide and the local authority to back them up.

The town's reaction turns a passing visit into a confrontation, and Reacher, who has no fear of the place and nothing to lose by staying, decides to find out what is being kept from him. The novel draws on the tradition of the wandering hero who is mistaken for a loiterer and harassed by local law enforcement, and it shares its central situation with David Morrell's First Blood.