From the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill: A Study of the Industrial Transition in North Carolina (1906)

KILLING FLOOR - I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. I was in a booth, at a window, reading somebody’s abandoned newspaper. Outside, the rain had stopped but the glass was still pebbled with bright drops. I saw the police cruisers pull into the gravel lot. They were moving fast and crunched to a stop. Light bars flashing and popping. Doors burst open, policemen jumped out. Two from each car, weapons ready. Two revolvers, two shotguns. This was heavy stuff. One revolver and one shotgun ran to the back. One of each rushed the door. I just sat and watched them. I knew who was in the diner. A cook in back. Two waitresses. Two old men. And me. This operation was for me. I had been in town less than half an hour. - From the opening of this searing tale of honor and revenge where Jack Reacher, a former military cop, hunts down his brother’s killers.
DIE TRYING - In a Chicago suburb, a dentist is met in his office parking lot by three men and ordered into the trunk of his Lexus. On a downtown sidewalk, Jack Reacher and an unknown woman are abducted in broad daylight by two men - practiced and confident - who stop them at gunpoint and hustle them into the same sedan. Then Reacher and the woman are switched into a second vehicle and hauled away, leaving the dentist bound and gagged inside his car with the woman’s abandoned possessions, two gallons of gasolinea ]and a burning match.
TRIPWIRE - Jack Reacher is settling into lazy Key West when his life is interrupted by a stranger who comes looking for him. When the stranger turns up beaten to death in the Old Town cemetery - fingertips removed - Reacher knows whomever the man was working for is not a friend. Reacher follows the trail to New York.