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Worth Dying For is the fifteenth book in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. It was published on September 30, 2010 in the United Kingdom and on October 19, 2010 in the USA. The book is the fifteenth in the series. It is written in the third person.

Description[]

There’s deadly trouble in the corn county of Nebraska, and Jack Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved, decades-old case of a missing child that Reacher can’t let go. The Duncans want Reacher gone, and it’s not just past secrets they’re trying to hide. For as dangerous as the Duncans are, they’re just the bottom of a criminal food chain stretching halfway around the world. For Reacher, it would have made much more sense to put some distance between himself and the hard-core trouble that’s bearing down on him. For Reacher, that was also impossible.

Plot[]

Following the events of 61 Hours, Reacher is on his way to Virginia to meet Major Susan Turner, the current commanding officer of his old unit, the 110th MP Special Investigations Unit. En route, he stops for the night at the Apollo Inn, a fading motel in rural Nebraska. In the motel's bar he overhears a drunken doctor refuse to take a house call for a woman named Eleanor Duncan, the abused wife of Seth Duncan, whose father and uncles run a trucking company that extorts business from surrounding farms. The Duncans employ ten ex-University of Nebraska Cornhusker offensive linemen as enforcers. Despite being warned that Eleanor is off-limits, Jack persuades the doctor to treat her nosebleed. He then tracks Seth to a local steakhouse, gives one of the Cornhuskers who is Seth's bodyguard a concussion, and breaks Seth's nose. The Duncans retaliate by sending two Cornhuskers to smash the doctor's car, and after Jack beats them up, the Duncans force the motel owner, Mr. Vincent, to throw Reacher out.

Jack pretends to leave, but slips back into his room for the night. The next day, he meets Dorothy Coe, who works part-time as the maid. She takes Reacher to her house for breakfast, and reveals that the Duncans drove her family into poverty years ago after she accused them of kidnapping her daughter Margaret, leading her husband Arthur to commit suicide. Rossi, an Italian-American mobster who works with the Duncans, sends two men to help them find Jack, but he manages to evade them when they arrive at Dorothy's farm. Rossi's Arab contact Safir and his Iranian boss Mahmeini subsequently send four more men when it becomes clear that the Duncans are incapable of dealing with Reacher. However, they both instruct their men to kill the others when possible to eliminate their competition. Meanwhile, Reacher puts another Cornhusker out of commission who was trying to kill him with his truck .

Visiting the local cops, Jack receives files from Margaret's disappearance, which seemingly clear the Duncans of any involvement. On his way back, he kills one of the Iranians, leading his partner to believe that he was murdered by the Italians. Reacher talks Eleanor into luring the lone Cornhusker who is guarding the road from town into following her. Reacher captures the Cornhusker, whose name is John, by parking his car across the road which forces John into a panic stop. Reacher takes John back to his living quarters, and challenges John to a fight. When John refuses to fight, Reacher tells John to stay out of the battle with the Duncans and takes his vehicle. While Reacher is meeting with the doctor and Dorothy to discuss what he found, Seth and five Cornhuskers arrive, having forced Eleanor to reveal Jack's plan, and lock them inside, breaking Reacher's nose and throwing him in the basement. The Italians form an alliance with Safir's men to dispose of the other Iranian and cut his boss out of the plan, then shoot them dead and set fire to the bodies, which Vincent witnesses.

Seth leaves, and Reacher manages to lure his two Cornhusker guards downstairs, where he subdues them, as well as two others when they arrive for breakfast. The last two Cornhuskers standing arrive next. One of them is the one who broke Reacher's nose. The other is John, which disappoints Reacher. Reacher forces the Cornhusker who broke his nose to immobilize John with duct tape. Reacher then challenges the Cornhusker to a fight, which Reacher wins easily, breaking the Cornhusker's nose in the process. The Italians kill the final Iranian as he interrogates the Duncans (having concluded that they murdered his partner after finding him in Seth's car) and leave to collect Reacher. After getting frustrated and stopping at Vincent's inn for the night, they are lured outside and killed by Reacher.

With the Duncans believing him to be dead, Jack makes his way to the old barn where Margaret was last seen, where he kills Eldrige Tyler, a friend of the Duncans guarding the barn who he fingers as her killer. Upon opening the barn and finding it full of decaying remains, he calls the townspeople over and reveals the truth: the Duncans have been engaging in human trafficking, bringing women and girls from Southeast Asia for the prostitution trade in Las Vegas. However, they also kept some of their cargo for purposes of sexual abuse, and Margaret, being adopted from Vietnam, was an easy target.

Horrified, the doctor, his wife, and Dorothy agree to help Reacher exact revenge on the Duncans. Using vehicles to trap them inside their own compound, Jack kills Seth's uncles with a rifle, before running down and killing Seth himself. The doctor and his wife chase down Seth's father, and Dorothy kills him. Eleanor liberates a shipment of females that her family planned to send to Vegas, and informs Reacher that she will take the girls to Denver so they can assimilate into the Thai community there or try to get back home. Thankful that justice has been delivered, Reacher resumes his journey to find Major Turner.

Appearances[]

Characters[]

The Ten Cornhuskers[]

For their security and enforcement, the Duncan's used former football players from the University of Nebraska. At the beginning of the story, there are supposed to be 10 of them actively working for the Duncans. Reacher meets up with each of them at some point in the novel.

  1. Brett #1 - Reacher disables him outside of the Steak restaurant.
  2. The guy with the wrench - After destroying the Doctor's car, Reacher breaks his leg and both wrists and then knocks him unconscious before dumping him back on the Duncan's property.
  3. Unnamed #1 (the guy with the hammer) - After destroying the Doctor's car, Reacher breaks his elbow and both his wrists and then knocks him unconscious before dumping him back on the Duncan's property.
  4. Brett #2 - Tried to run over Reacher with a truck in a field. Reacher gave him instructions to go talk with the Duncans and then broke his right arm and knocked him unconscious.
  5. John - Reacher sets a trap for him and gets him out of his car to tell him to take him to the Duncan's freight facility. Reacher lets him walk away after calling him a coward. John shows up again at the Doctor's house with the one who had broken Reacher's nose. Reacher makes the other one hog tie him.
  6. The one holding the shotgun while Reacher is locked in the basement of the Doctor's house - Reacher takes the shotgun from him when they try to catch him and Reacher smashes him in the face, knocking him unconscious. After knocking his partner out, Reacher binds them together with duct tape and leaves them lying in the hallway.
  7. The partner of the one holding the shotgun - Reacher knocks him unconscious after hitting the other guy. Reacher binds them together with duct tape and leaves them lying in the hallway.
  8. The one with the black pickup truck - Reacher hits him in the back of the head as he walks into the Doctor's house and then ties him up.
  9. The next one - was knocked out just like the previous one and tied up.
  10. The next one - was the one that had broken Reacher's nose with the butt of the shotgun. Reacher forces him to fight and he ends up with a broken nose among other injuries.

Locations[]

  • United States
    • Nebraska
    • Montana
      • Hogg Parish
    • Nevada
      • Las Vegas
  • Canada
    • Vancouver
    • Alberta

Organizations[]

Weapons[]

  • Colt Double Eagle
  • Grand Alaskan .338 magnum rifle made by the Arnold Arms Company
  • Glock 17
  • Remington Model 870

Vehicles[]

  • GMC Yukon/Chevrolet Tahoe
  • Chevrolet Malibu
  • Chevrolet Impala
  • Chevrolet Silverado
  • Ford Taurus
  • Mazda MX-5 “Miata”

Events[]

Miscellanea[]

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