In Paris a 90-year-old man, the retired furniture restorer and World War I veteran Laurent Moutier, is unable to get out of bed and realizes he is about to die.

This takes some effort since she is married to an American military officer who is a member of US Marine Corps and she is constantly moving around the world with her husband on his different assignments.

The bad news from Paris, prompting Josephine to immediately take the first plane there, is compounded by a string of various kinds of trouble hitting members of the family.

Reacher and his 15-year-old brother Joe ran afoul of the neighborhood bully, an earlier-arrived American boy who takes "a toll" of anyone going to swim in the sea.

Moreover, while just 13 years old, he displays enough self-confidence and force of personality to make a detail of grown-up military policemen follow through on the leads he offers them.