In a small Indiana city, a lone gunman in a parking garage calmly fires into a rush-hour crowd in a public plaza, committing a massacre of five apparently random victims with six shots. The shooter leaves a perfect trail behind for the police to quickly track him down. Evidence from the scene, of a shell case and a quarter bearing the same fingerprints, points clearly to James Barr, a former Army infantry sniper. He is arrested, but will only say two things to the police: "They got the wrong guy," and "Get Jack Reacher for me." Reacher, a former Army military police officer and now a drifter, is 1500 miles away, but sees the news on CNN and gets on a bus to Indiana. Reacher has no job, no home, no car, and a shrinking savings account from his past military pay. Although Reacher has a nomadic existence, what he does have is sharp moral clarity.