Reacher's lazy anonymity in Key West is shattered by a stranger who comes to town searching for him. Hours after his arrival, the stranger turns up beaten to death in the Old Town cemetery, and Reacher is forced to follow the man's cold trail back to New York to find the people who dispatched him in the first place: a bewildered and elderly couple still mourning an all-American son lost in Vietnam; an alluring and intelligent woman from Reacher's own haunted past; and at the center of the web, the most vicious opponent Reacher has ever faced.