The Visitor

The fourth installment in Lee Child's Jack Reacher series opens with Jack Reacher, a former U.S. Army military police major turned drifter, eating dinner at Mostro's, a struggling Italian restaurant in Tribeca, New York City. When two men working a protection racket for a criminal named Petrosian pressure the restaurant owner, Reacher ambushes them in the alley, beats them, glues warning labels to their foreheads, and takes their cash. A sandy-haired man and a dark-haired woman from another table watch from across the street.

Reacher drives to his house in Garrison, New York, inherited from Leon Garber, his former commanding officer and the deceased father of his girlfriend, Jodie Jacob, a Wall Street lawyer. FBI agents ambush him in his driveway; the dark-haired woman flashes a badge and holds Reacher at gunpoint during the drive back to Manhattan.

At the FBI's New York Field Office, Reacher faces five agents, including Assistant Director Alan Deerfield; Agent-in-Charge Nelson Blake from the Serial Crimes Unit at Quantico, the FBI's training and research facility in Virginia; and Special Agent Julia Lamarr, Blake's lead criminal profiler. Blake questions Reacher about two women he investigated as a military police officer: Sergeant Amy Callan and Lieutenant Caroline Cooke, both of whom filed sexual harassment complaints and left the service. Blake reveals both are homicide victims, killed with an identical method, and Reacher was one of their few mutual acquaintances. Lamarr presents a profile that matches Reacher: a loner, a vigilante, an Army man trusted by the victims.

Jodie arrives as Reacher's lawyer and recognizes the trap: By proving he acted alone at the restaurant, Reacher only deepened his fit with the serial-killer profile. Reacher deduces a third victim must exist based on the killer's three-week cycle. Deerfield arrests him for assault and aiding extortion, then releases him on his own recognizance.

Blake and Lamarr confirm the third victim: Lorraine Stanley, a former quartermaster sergeant found dead in San Diego. They press Reacher to serve as liaison with the military, which harbors deep institutional hostility toward the FBI. When Reacher refuses, Blake threatens to leak Jodie's name to Petrosian. Jodie theorizes the Bureau is using Reacher as a weapon, provoking him to eliminate Petrosian and the killer without traceable involvement. Reacher accepts the assignment.

Lamarr drives Reacher to Quantico, claiming a phobia prevents her from flying. She briefs him on the case: All three victims were found naked in bathtubs submerged in Army camouflage green paint. No forced entry, no trace evidence, and no identifiable cause of death were found. At Quantico, Reacher is assigned a handler, Special Agent Lisa Harper, a direct, 29-year-old agent. Blake implies Harper was assigned as a honey trap, but Harper tells Reacher she refused to participate.

Blake sends Reacher to investigate Special Forces personnel at Fort Dix, New Jersey, through Colonel John Trent, who owes him a favor. Reacher uses the visit as cover: He escapes through Trent's window, travels to Chinatown by military transport, and provokes a turf war between Chinese criminal organizations and Petrosian's operation, engineering Petrosian's elimination without direct involvement.

Reacher and Harper fly to Spokane to visit Alison Lamarr, Julia's stepsister, who lives alone in a remote ranch house. Alison doubts Julia's criminal profile and mentions that Julia once hypnotized her at Quantico for background research. Back at Quantico, Reacher narrows the target list from 91 women to 11 who live alone in isolated houses. Blake dismisses the analysis.

When the New York Times reports Petrosian's death, Reacher's leverage shifts. He walks out of Quantico, but Harper brings urgent news: Alison has been found dead with the identical method, breaking the three-week cycle. Blake now embraces Reacher's theory. At the crime scene, Reacher finds a washing-machine carton in the garage, sealed during his earlier visit but now open, containing empty paint cans. Identical cartons were overlooked at all previous scenes, and all seven surviving women on Reacher's list have received similar deliveries.

Reacher and Harper visit Rita Scimeca, a former Army lieutenant in Portland, Oregon, whose gang-rape case Reacher once investigated. Her basement holds an identical sealed carton. Reacher challenges the profile, arguing the killer is too rational to be driven by irrational rage, and proposes the motive is protecting a criminal weapons-theft enterprise. Lamarr enthusiastically endorses this theory. A pathologist concludes the victims died from airway obstruction but cannot explain how it could be inflicted on a conscious, resisting person.

The weapons-theft theory collapses: The prime suspect uses a wheelchair, Cooke was never near weapons, and an Army investigation reveals the paint was stolen by Stanley herself. UPS records show Stanley shipped all 11 cartons, and a delivery driver recalls Alison happily accepting her shipment and shredding the paperwork.

Alone at night, Reacher realizes the women were lying with scripted cover stories; each expected her carton and destroyed the paperwork. He recalls Alison mentioning Julia's hypnosis session and recognizes that Julia, the Bureau's leading hypnosis expert, could have visited all 11 women using her FBI credentials, implanting post-hypnotic commands that compelled them to participate in their own deaths, including forcing their tongues back to fatally obstruct their airways. Julia's fear of flying was a lie that made her presence at distant crime scenes seem impossible; she flew under false identities. Her true motive was her stepfather's inheritance: With Alison dead and no other heirs, everything would pass to Julia. The other victims were camouflage designed to bury the personal motive in a serial pattern.

Reacher and Harper race to Portland to save Scimeca. Interspersed second-person narration reveals Julia conducting surveillance, stealing a mobile phone to reactivate Scimeca's hypnotic programming, and hiding in the trunk of Scimeca's car. Under post-hypnotic control, Scimeca buys paint and begins the ritual.

Reacher and Harper kick in the door and find Scimeca rigid in a tub of green water with Julia on the rim. Reacher strikes Julia to reach Scimeca, forces her tongue forward, and restores her airway. Harper washes the paint off Scimeca. Julia is dead from the blow.

Reacher is arrested. Blake and Deerfield insist Julia will be portrayed as a heroic agent killed by Reacher, with the serial killer remaining officially unidentified. Reacher counters that he cannot be framed as both Julia's killer and the serial murderer, because the FBI's own surveillance report, already given to Jodie, proves he did not kill Stanley. They reach a stalemate: Reacher keeps silent about Julia's guilt to protect Scimeca from publicity, and the Bureau does not prosecute.

Reacher returns to New York to find Jodie's firm celebrating her promotion to partner. Her first assignment is running the London office for two years. Jodie and Reacher acknowledge they cannot sustain a life together: She needs the settled world, and he needs to keep moving. They agree to spend the remaining weeks together, and he suggests he might visit from time to time. They leave the party together.