The Enemy: A Jack Reacher Novel - Softcover

Child, Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440241014 ISBN 13: 9780440241010

Publisher: Random House Inc., 2005

Synopsis

Jack Reacher. Hero. Loner. Soldier. Soldier’s son. An elite military cop, he was one of the army’s brightest stars. But in every cop’s life there is a turning point. One case. One messy, tangled case that can shatter a career. Turn a lawman into a renegade. And make him question words like honor, valor, and duty. For Jack Reacher, this is that case.

New Year’s Day, 1990. The Berlin Wall is coming down. The world is changing. And in a North Carolina “hot-sheets” motel, a two-star general is found dead. His briefcase is missing. Nobody knows what was in it. Within minutes Jack Reacher has his orders: Control the situation. But this situation can’t be controlled. Within hours the general’s wife is murdered hundreds of miles away. Then the dominoes really start to fall.

Two Special Forces soldiers—the toughest of the tough—are taken down, one at a time. Top military commanders are moved from place to place in a bizarre game of chess. And somewhere inside the vast worldwide fortress that is the U.S. Army, Jack Reacher—an ordinarily untouchable investigator for the 110th Special Unit—is being set up as a fall guy with the worst enemies a man can have.

But Reacher won’t quit. He’s fighting a new kind of war. And he’s taking a young female lieutenant with him on a deadly hunt that leads them from the ragged edges of a rural army post to the winding streets of Paris to a confrontation with an enemy he didn’t know he had. With his French-born mother dying—and divulging to her son one last, stunning secret—Reacher is forced to question everything he once believed...about his family, his career, his loyalties—and himself. Because this soldier’s son is on his way into the darkness, where he finds a tangled drama of desperate desires and violent death—and a conspiracy more chilling, ingenious, and treacherous than anyone could have guessed.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this title

Review

Lee Child is a quiet, undemonstrative man who is phlegmatic about his success in the thriller field. The Enemy will no doubt attract the usual enthusiastic acclaim, and it deserves to. One thing that is guaranteed to please Child is the open-mouthed astonishment of American readers who learn that this writer of the most idiomatic American thrillers (with brilliantly realised US locales) is actually English. But there's never a sense of striving for effects in such taut Child novels as Killing Floor and Die Trying. Child simply delivers the goods, US-style--and The Enemy is no exception.

Child's usual protagonist, the tough and resourceful Jack Reacher, is in North Carolina on New Year's Day, 1990. Elsewhere, world-shaking events are underway, such as the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. But Jack's job as a Military Police Duty Officer has him concerned with what initially seem to be less significant happenings: a soldier has been found dead in a sleazy motel and when Jack goes to the house of the soldier (a two-star general) to inform his wife, he finds her also dead. Needless to say, events in another part of the globe are having fatal repercussions in the US, and Reacher is soon up to his neck, with the body count rising.

As a glimpse into the early life of Jack Reacher (now securely one of the most admired heroes in contemporary thriller writing), this is meat and drink to the Child aficionado. Child foregrounds characterisation in his pacy narratives, and this eighth outing for Jack has all the adrenalin-producing qualities of its predecessors. --Barry Forshaw

Review

"A fabulously suspenseful prequel....[Lee Child's] best so far." Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Textured, swift, and told in Reacher's inimitably tough voice Child has few peers in thrillerdom." Publishers Weekly, starred review
"The best showcase of Child's talent to date. .... one of the best thriller writers at work." Rocky Mountain News
"The Enemysizzles with suspense and action. Child sets a breathless pace." Orlando Sentinel
"Arip-roaring read from the first page to the last." St. Petersburg Times
"[Jack Reacher is]. . .the thinking reader's action hero a surprisingly tender combination of chess master and G.I. Joe." Seattle Times
"Will keep you guessing until the final page." Playboy

From the Hardcover edition."

"A fabulously suspenseful prequel.... [Lee Child's] best so far."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Textured, swift, and told in Reacher's inimitably tough voice ... Child has few peers in thrillerdom."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"The best showcase of Child's talent to date. .... one of the best thriller writers at work."--Rocky Mountain News

"The Enemy sizzles with suspense and action. Child sets a breathless pace."--Orlando Sentinel

"A rip-roaring read from the first page to the last ."--St. Petersburg Times

"[Jack Reacher is]. . .the thinking reader's action hero a surprisingly tender combination of chess master and G.I. Joe."--Seattle Times

"Will keep you guessing until the final page."--Playboy

From the Hardcover edition.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House Inc.
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0440241014
• ISBN 13: 9780440241010
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 496