One Shot

One Shot is the ninth novel in the Jack Reacher series by the British writer Lee Child, published in 2005.

The book begins with a mass shooting in an ordinary city and a case that appears to be closed almost immediately, since the evidence points at a former army sniper who is arrested within a day. The accused man's request for Reacher is what brings the character into the story, because Reacher knew him in the military and knows what he was capable of, including the fact that a trained sniper does not miss six times in a row. Reacher works with a young defence lawyer to find out where the case against the suspect came from, and the investigation leads towards people who have arranged the whole business in advance and are watching how it proceeds. Child writes in short chapters with a tight third-person focus on Reacher, and this novel has the series' familiar shape: a stranger with a military past arrives, tests the official version of events and finds the group behind it.

The series had begun in 1997 with Killing Floor, and the books are designed to be read independently, with the character moving from town to town rather than accumulating a household.