The Enemy - Hardcover

Child, Lee

4.17

133,300 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593051823 ISBN 13: 9780593051825

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2004

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New Year's Day, 1990. The Berlin Wall is coming down. Soon America won't have any enemies left to fight. The army is under pressure to downsize. Jack Reacher is the duty Military Police officer on a base in North Carolina when he takes a call reporting a dead soldier. The body was found in a sleazy motel used by local hookers. Reacher tells the local cop to handle it - it sounds like the guy just had a heart attack. But the dead man turns out to have been a two-star general on a secret mission. And then, many miles away, when Reacher goes to the general's house to break the sad news, he finds a battered corpse: the general's wife. Lee Child's new stomach-churning, palm-sweating thriller turns back the clock to Jack Reacher's army days. For the first time we meet a younger Reacher, a Reacher not yet disillusioned with military life. A Reacher with family. A Reacher in dogtags and starched uniform who imposes army discipline, if only in his own pragmatic way. A Reacher as far from the no-credit card, no-last-known-address drifter of the previous eight novels as is possible to imagine.

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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 more intricate plot, which makes another enjoyable read in this first-rate series.' -- Sunday Telegraph

'Another great book for him, gives us hero Jack Reacher's back-story. Hurrah.' -- Kate Atkinson, DAILY TELEGRAPH (Books of the Year)

'Exciting stuff, with a narrative that rarely lets up ... A distinct cut above your average airport thriller.' -- Ink

'Lee Child fans will love this prequel to the best-selling Jack Reacher novels...Ass-kicking.' -- Scottish Daily Record

'Slick, pacy period piece from one of the UK’s most successful thriller writers.' -- JACK

'The thing about Lee Child’s books is that you can’t put the damn things down...Addictive...Superb.' -- Independent on Sunday

'another great book for him...Hurrah'. -- Daily Telegraph

'utterley irresistible, proof that there is no substitute...' -- Observer

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