Jack Reacher's Rules

POTENTIAL ALIASES FOR USE WHEN BOOKING A MOTEL

“It helps if you can use a list of names embedded in your memory. Like the U.S. Presidents.”

George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William H. Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover

“If in doubt, use the names of obscure baseball players or dead musicians.”

“I like aliases. I like anonymity.”

“I don’t need to go hunting them. I already know I’m smarter than an armadillo.”

The basis of any scam is telling people what they want to hear. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

A classic confidence trick is where you drip, drip, drip the unimportant stuff but then hold back on the final installment.

Assess and evaluate.

Paranoia prefers triple bluffs to double bluffs.

Killers don’t stop at two murders. If they do more than one, they do more than two.

“People don’t look for complications. You hear hoofbeats, you look for horses, not zebras.”

“Something for nothing, that’s a foreign language.”

All good scam artists stick as close to the truth as possible.

There’s always something out of context, even before you know what the context ought to be.

Force yourself to think like they think.

“The whole of life is a gamble, from the very beginning to the very end.”

MIRANDA

The Miranda warning is used by U.S. police when questioning criminal suspects, to protect the individual from compelled self-incrimination, and to preserve the admissibility of the criminal’s statement in court. It originated in 1966 after Miranda vs. Arizona, when an Ernesto Arturo Miranda was deemed to have had his rights violated during his arrest.

• You have the right to remain silent.

• Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law.

• You have the right to speak to an attorney.

• If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.

• Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?

“Ernesto A. Miranda was a moron, you know that?” Deerfield said. “A couple of smokes short of a pack. He was a subnormal guy. He needed the protection. You subnormal? You a moron, Reacher?”

“Probably, to be putting up with this shit.”

THE SCIENCE OF … BURNING DOWN A BUILDING

Place books of matches under furniture in the center of the room.

Pile as much paper as you can find on top; lean a burning cigarette against the matches.

Retire, leaving the door open for a draft.

Brick buildings always burn well. The contents go up first, then the floors, ceiling, and roof, with the outer walls holding up and forming a tall chimney to enhance the air flow. When the walls finally collapse, the blast of sparks and embers will spread the fire farther.

Sometimes a whole city block can be taken out with one cigarette and one book of matches.

“I’m sleeping well … but I think that’s mostly because of the tranquilizers.”