Opening paragraphs......................

Sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, fifty-two weeks in a year.  Reacher ballparked the calculation in his head and came up with a little more than thirty million seconds in any twelve-month span.  During which time nearly ten million significant crimes would be committed in the United States alone.  Roughly one every three seconds.  Not rare.  To see one actually take place, right in front of you, up close and personal, was not inherently unlikely.  Location mattered, of course.  Crime went where people went.  Odds were better in the center of a city than the middle of a meadow.

-Lee Child, from his short story Too Much Time