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Personal is the Lee Child Reacher novel where Reacher gets pulled out of his American drift and sent to Europe to track a sniper who tried to assassinate a French president from a long distance the FBI cannot quite believe was made by a human being. The setup is one of Child's best late-period premises.
The Paris and London sections are the strongest in the book. Child clearly enjoyed putting Reacher in environments where his American assumptions did not quite line up with what the locals took for granted. The action sequences in the third act are some of the cleanest the series has produced in a decade.
The Russian-mob material in the back half is the kind of conventional thriller stuff the form has been delivering since the 80s. The Reacher-in-Paris atmosphere is the real attraction.
Four stars. Recommended even to readers who fell off the series after the first 10 entries. One of the more interesting late Reacher novels.
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