Lee Child: Enemy (2014, Penguin Random House)
592 pages
English language
Published Dec. 2, 2014 by Penguin Random House.
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 …
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.
Content warning Mild spoiler
The Enemy takes Reacher back to 1990, when he's still in the army, still an MP. Still follows the Reacher formula though: he sleeps with the girl, doesn't seem to get anywhere for a while, then makes a series of leaps but doesn't tell others until he gets his ducks lined up.
Probably the best Reacher book out of the 8 so far - which is amusing because usually prequels are a lot worse. However, since the Reacher novels are episodic and very little in the previous novels matter in the each subsequent one, the fact that this is a prequel doesn't really matter. In this, Reacher returns to being in the army, with one hell of a mystery to solve that quickly spirals into something more than what he expects. Classic stuff with lots of twists and turns. It's in first-person and is pretty much peak Lee Child -- Reacher is his usual competent self, seeing everything yet in a flawed manner. This means that if (as the reader) have Sherlock Holmes level capabilities, you can probably see where Reacher goes wrong. Otherwise, the twists and turns come as surprises for all. I crushed this in two days and highly recommend. …
Probably the best Reacher book out of the 8 so far - which is amusing because usually prequels are a lot worse. However, since the Reacher novels are episodic and very little in the previous novels matter in the each subsequent one, the fact that this is a prequel doesn't really matter. In this, Reacher returns to being in the army, with one hell of a mystery to solve that quickly spirals into something more than what he expects. Classic stuff with lots of twists and turns. It's in first-person and is pretty much peak Lee Child -- Reacher is his usual competent self, seeing everything yet in a flawed manner. This means that if (as the reader) have Sherlock Holmes level capabilities, you can probably see where Reacher goes wrong. Otherwise, the twists and turns come as surprises for all. I crushed this in two days and highly recommend.
I was always surprised at how easily Reacher gets into the high ranks (in this case the Naval Chief of Staff) but doesn't seem to have any friends to count on in the future. It's not entirely out of place, as he relies on his rank and reputation to score favors from fellow MP Majors in the army, but shows little skill at maintaining those relationships... so it's plausible the top brass won't reach out to help him at all. I prefer Reacher in the army. His superhero attitude is much more understandable as an MP surrounded by highly trained killers. The whole Delta subplot really underscored this... there was a credible threat to Reacher's life the entire time and I appreciate that. I'm not sure what will get a five star rating from me, and this one really close. I think the cringe relationship in Paris and Summer was really what ruined the perfect book. Seriously, keep it in your pants.
