The Enemy: The unputdownable Jack Reacher thriller from the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author (Jack Reacher, 8) - Softcover

Child, Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553815857 ISBN 13: 9780553815856

Publisher: Bantam, 2005

Synopsis

Featuring Jack Reacher, hero of the new blockbuster movie starring Tom Cruise, in his younger days as a Military Policeman in the US Army.

New Year's Day, 1990.

A soldier is found dead in a sleazy motel bed. Jack Reacher is the officer on duty. The soldier turns out to be a two-star general. The situation is bad enough, then Reacher finds the general's wife.

This stomach-churning thriller turns back the clock to a younger Reacher, in dogtags. A Reacher who still believes in the service. A Reacher who imposes army discipline. Even if only in his own pragmatic way...

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

"'Complex, classy crime'" (Mirror)

"'One of the best writers in this genre ... And nobody does it better'" (The Sunday Telegraph)

"'The thing about Lee Child's books is that you can't put the damn things down... there's something about his writing that's addictive. The Enemy is no exception...Superb'" (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY)

"'Lee Child fans will love this prequel to the bestselling Jack Reacher novels. At last Child shares the events that shaped the maverick hero of his last six novels into an ass-kicking, irreverent good guy. If you're one of the few people who haven't sampled the sublime thrill of a Child novel, this blast from the past is the best place to start'" (SCOTTISH DAILY RECORD)

"An unforgettable hero...may be the best Reacher book yet." (Newsweek)

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0553815857
• ISBN 13: 9780553815856
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576