The first and best news is that Lee Child is back in form with "Gone Tomorrow". While not the all time best Reacher novel that I have read, this is a more than satisfactory addition to the series. It involves some truly unpleasant villains, a politician with a deeply guarded secret, a missing son and plenty of tension. One thing I love but also find quite disconcerting when I'm reading a Reacher novel is the way that he deliberately seeks out and provokes the bad guys. It's so much the opposite of the way that I would behave that I find it quite nerve-wracking to read. And in this book, he does it a LOT.
It starts with Reacher on a New York subway in the small hours of the morning. He spots a woman, Susan Marks, whose behaviour meets every criteria for a suicide bomber. She's not. But she is a woman in trouble. Reacher can't help Susan, but he can't let the matter rest until he finds out what was behind her state of mind and finds the people who drove her to that point. Although at various times he recruits her brother and a friendly police officer as allies, essentially this is Reacher taking on the bad guys on his own.
The first half of the book is all set up and it's quite gradual. Reacher is a little slow off the mark: there are a couple of revelations that seemed pretty obvious to me, but which take some time to emerge. On the other hand, I wasn't sure for quite some time who the villains would turn out to be, which I enjoyed. In the second half, Reacher goes after the villains: this half is dead exciting and includes some of the most graphic descriptions of violence that I remember Lee Child writing.
There is one central implausibility: Reacher is told repeatedly that he'll be in deep trouble if he finds out a particular secret. But when he does find it out, suddenly it doesn't seem to matter that he knows. Child also leaves a couple of key plot elements unresolved. And the obligatory roll in the sack feels just that: out of place and only there because it's expected. However, at the end of the day these are just annoyances, not critical flaws.
Unusually, this book is written in the first person (as if Reacher is narrating): only three other Lee Child books have used this. It's not my preference given that Reacher is such an enigma, but it works fine. It's a great read: enjoy!