Bad Luck and Trouble
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| Author | Lee Child |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Jack Reacher |
| Genre | Thriller novel |
| Publisher | Bantam Press (UK), Delacorte Press (US) |
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Publication date
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2007 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| ISBN | (cased), 9780593057001 (tpb) |
| OCLC | 71779047 |
| Preceded by | The Hard Way |
| Followed by | Nothing to Lose |
Bad Luck and Trouble is the eleventh book in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. It was published in 2007, and written in the third person.
The title is derived from the song lyrics by singer Albert King "Born Under a Bad Sign".
A man with two broken legs is thrown out of a corporate helicopter from 3,000 feet above the California desert.
Seventeen days after that, Reacher is roaming alone with no objectives, no phone, no address, just the clothes he's wearing and his ATM card, when he sees an anonymous deposit to his bank account. Reacher automatically analyses the amount, using his math obsession and investigative skills. Also obsessed with math, Frances Neagley (previously seen in Without Fail) is the sender of $1,030.00, which Reacher recognizes as their old army code, 10–30, for urgent help needed. He meets up with Neagley in California and they discover the death of Calvin Franz, one of nine members of their elite team of ex–army investigators, who are being hunted down one by one. After getting no reply from anyone else, their suspicions rise and Neagley convinces him to put the old unit back together. Reacher and Neagley find that three of the other five members are missing, while Stan Lowery had a fatal car accident years earlier. They conclude Franz called the others for help with a major problem but left out the remaining four that resided too far away to get to him quickly, apart from Reacher, who is famously untraceable.
Reacher and Neagley visit Franz's widow and child, Angela and Charlie. Angela is not surprised to see them and says that Franz told her all about the team, which made her feel like he had been married before, to them. Reacher notes if people were lucky like the team, they became family, but Franz got even luckier with her and Charlie, with Angela replying "but his luck ran out". The visit produces no useful information about Franz's death, but Angela gives them Franz's office keys, which Reacher and Neagley find gutted and trashed. They realise the perpetrators didn't find what they were looking for and that Franz kept his home life completely separate from his business, leading Franz to mail any dangerous computer data to himself, with triple backup of refreshed computer USB flash drives on rotating days. They find his flash memory sticks in his business post-office box and try unsuccessfully to crack the password. More information on the other team members shows that Franz was unlikely to be the one who called for help. Reacher and Neagley go to Tony Swan's workplace, defense contractor New Age in search of information, but are sent away with basically nothing by the HR manager, Margaret Berenson, except that Swan had been unemployed by them three weeks prior.
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