Until recently I have avoided the Jack Reacher books for the same reason it took me a while to get round to Terry Pratchett or Ian Rankine: I hate hype. The more froth the less I feel the need to get involved. Sometimes I'm wrong, the above are good examples, sometimes I'm right, I'll never get the day or two it took me to read Mosse's Labyrinth back. I should know better than to trust Richard and Judy. 
 As a first novel it is very impressive, more so in as much as the tone of the series set in this book has not changed hugely after the dozen or so I have read so far. Did I say I liked it? 
 Reacher was a Major in the military police and is now drifting across America, a country he has never really lived in, going straight into the Army after bouncing around the world as an Army brat. A conceit that works well in respect of the series, allowing him to range across the States at will, deftly removing the Midsomer Norton effect. 
 In Margrave he falls foul of the police, a stranger in town the day a body is found, things don't go well for him, particularly as there is a witness who puts him at the scene of the crime hours before he arrived in town. The slow reveal of the secrets of a perfect rural town are paced well, the question of who to trust hangs heavily and is executed with skill. There are moments of extreme violence, experienced and implied, but it doesn't get out of hand. It's a side of Reacher that is explored more as the books progress. 
 Reacher fulfils all the requirements of an action hero: physically intimidating, extremely skilled marksman and unarmed fighter, attractive to women, smart and stubborn as hell. 
 For me, there is one major problem. There is a huge coincidence quite early in the book. It is, in part, necessary to keep Reacher involved and provides a nice plot device, but it is still massively unlikely and casts shadows into the corners of the whole series. How effective it is depends on whether Child knew that the character was going to carry more than one book or not. If he did then it is an impressive piece of foreshadowing. If not then the way he has dealt with it as the books progressed is almost more impressive.