Lee Child's Personal

The martial type of character can be bred without war.  Strenuous honor and disinterestedness abound everywhere.
William James, The Moral Equivalent of War, 1910

I don't forgive and I don't forget.
Jack Reacher, Personal (Lee Child, Delacorte, 2014)

It was one of my father's regrets, that neither of his sons served in the armed forces, the army during WWII having been the highlight of his own life.  Occasionally I could see the appeal --when I watched Sgt. Bilko or listened to Jean Shepherd's wonderful army stories -- but I was lucky enough to get number 350 in the Shirley-Jackson-lottery of people's lives during the Vietnam war. No doubt we are better off without the George-Orwell-like "selective service" but the all-volunteer army has been at quite a price for those without other choices in their lives. In rejecting the involuntary servitude of the draft, however, are we neglecting certain positive attitudes?  Lee Child thinks so, and his character Jack Reacher, formerly an MP, has been shown (in nineteen books) to have many positive attributes, particularly morality and austerity.  Reacher travels somewhat randomly around the country, carrying little more than a toothbrush but always ready to lend a helping, and often violent, hand.  In Personal he is in Paris and London in an attempt to thwart an assassination by a violent sniper who is out of prison, having been put there by Reacher 15 years before.  The plot is complicated but Reacher uses his usual combination of physical and mental strength to solve the problem and the Army general behind it.  He doesn't sleep with his female assistant and leaves quietly on the next bus, rather like a Western hero, always aware, as he says, "You can leave the army but the army doesn't leave you.  Not always. Not completely."