The Hard Way

The Hard Way is a thriller by Lee Child and one of the novels featuring Jack Reacher, a former military policeman who travels with no luggage, no address and no official standing.

The book opens with Reacher in New York, standing on a street and idly watching a man collect a car. The car was carrying the ransom for a kidnapping, and the man who paid, Edward Lane, keeps going: he runs a private operation that supplies soldiers for hire, and he has both the money and the reach to keep looking until his wife and child are returned. Reacher is given the job of hunting, and hunting is the thing he does best. He notices what other people walk past, which is what Lane is paying for.

The search takes Reacher out of the city and into the operation Lane has built for himself, where the staff are paid well and the arrangements are made to suit the man paying. Its chapters move between the street where the ransom was collected, the household Lane has assembled and the hunt that follows.