The Enemy (Jack Reacher, No. 8) by Lee Child
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Book Reviews of The Enemy (Jack Reacher, No. 8)
Book Review: The Enemy by Childs
Summary: 5 Stars
Thoroughly enjoyed the book. Well written with plenty of action and suspence.Book Review: The world needs more Jack Reacher's!
Summary: 5 Stars
Child rarely disappoints. Jack Reacher makes my day. I wish he was real!Book Review: Exciting police procedural with a blockbuster ending.
Summary: 4 Stars
In the taut, staccato style reminiscent of Raymond Chandler or John D. MacDonald, Lee Child presents his eighth Jack Reacher novel, a police procedural with a difference: Reacher is an MP, an army Major at Fort Bird, North Carolina, obedient to a different set of rules and objectives. Recently transferred from Panama to be MP Executive Officer, Reacher must immediately investigate the death of a two-star general who has died in a seedy, nearby motel, presumably with a prostitute. His briefcase, containing the agenda for a top-secret conference in California, has disappeared, and when Reacher and his aide, Lt. Summer, go to break the news to the general's wife, they find her dead, too, bludgeoned to death with a crowbar within hours of the general's death.
With almost military precision, dramatic complications unfold, and Reacher soon finds himself facing two new deaths, one of which is a gruesome butchering which takes place on the base. Ordered by superiors to cover up the murder by calling it a "training accident," Reacher and his aide investigate surreptitiously, soon discovering that his MP XO counterparts at twenty more bases throughout the world have also been newly appointed to their positions, all of them on or around December 29. Obvious questions arise about who is pulling the strings, who has the power to transfer so many MPs to new posts, and why someone would want to do so.
Child is a meticulous writer whose plot follows a strict chronological order and moves at a breath-taking pace, with one dramatic scene following hard on the heels of another. Reacher and his aide Summer are not fully developed characters, but they do not need to be as they struggle to learn who is controlling the grisly chess game which has resulted in four deaths. The action is resolved in an extravagant grand finale, with twists and turns and spectacular surprises. Though the ending resolves the disparate threads, it may also be a disappointment to some readers, since the premise behind the plot and the motivation which led to the murders, when finally revealed, seems too unrealistic to justify the murderous extremes to which "the enemy" has gone. Though Child is brilliant in creating an exciting story packed with action, the final pages feel cynical and reveal a view of humanity that is grim. Mary Whipple
Book Review: So Well Constructed
Summary: 4 Stars
The bottom line is there is a payoff to everything. I'm reading the Child stuff in no particular order so at first I thought maybe this early stuff was a lesson in how Child changed over the years. Perhaps how he learned to cut out the unnecessary parts. I thought the long first visit with his mother (and brother) in France was pointless, but of course not. It comes back and it roars back with emotion and a direct impact on the character of Reacher. At first I thought some extraneous characters early on were bumps in the road, but of course not. They come back. In fact, pretty much everybody is in play. The beginning here shows how to start with a brilliant thread and watch how it can unravel a whole spool. That thread even includes the time and date of the year. I feel compelled to make a point about Child side by side with Michael Connelly. The fun is in watching Reacher and Bosch piece things together, seeing them press their own thinking, seeing them process tiny tidbits, storing them away like nuts for the winter until they are needed. Both Child and Connelly know how to slow the action down and dwell on the thought process itself, which is the fun of following a mystery-crime novel. And, finally, both authors ground their characters in real government agencies (at least in this book for Child) that feels real and adds a source of pressure to their main characters' challenges.
Reacher's relationship here with Summer is interesting and strong and Reacher isn't afraid to use her as a sounding board, even as a resource. I would still say the search for the crowbar scene was much too long. So are some of the time-killing scenes in Paris, but only by comparison to the other fast-track action. Some of the driving around and flying around gets a bit tedious, but there are even insights there which are enjoyable. The finish is right up there, even across multiple time zones and with action that is over the top. I really have no idea why this wouldn't make a great movie; you'd just need to clip a few of the scenes with, well, padding. For completists, of course, you'll read this. For those who are only going to read a few, this might be a good choice, particularly if you want to see Reacher working within the Army bureaucracy and before he became the near mythical drifter-stranger-problem solver that he is in 2008.
Book Review: CSI-Style Crime Procedural set against a Military Backdrop
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Enemy" is the eighth book in the Jack Reacher series, but being a prequel, it's a fine place to begin to cut your teeth on this compelling (and also terminally unlucky) protagonist. It happened to be the first Reacher book that I read and it's been a great primer for the older books in the series.
The book will be of obvious interest to anyone who's into the whole CSI-wherever mania. The backdrop of the U.S. military at the functional crossroads of the fall of the Berlin Wall is an interesting one that I haven't seen explored before in this sort of thriller.
Reacher's experiences in this book also go a long way toward explaining and justifying his cynical worldview and tenacious pursuit of right over wrong that otherwise might seem to be a bit of overkill when considering only the other books in the series. The author made a great choice in providing this prequel as a framework for the rest of his protagonist's life.
Best of all, the book is just plain well-written. The subtle mark of good writing is that its flow makes it virtually transparent to the reader. I find that I have to force my way through so many other lesser authors' stilted verbiage and clumsy narrative; this is not the case with "The Enemy". I've read many other people complain about the rat-a-tat-tat style of brief stream-of-conscious phrases that Child employs. While there probably is too much of this convention in earlier Reacher books, it's not so here. The incomplete thoughts and unfinished observations here only serve to give credibility to the first-person voice he employs.
The story is a true page-turner a la Harlan Coben when he's on his game. While it does lag a bit past the halfway point, the story wraps with a conclusion that is exciting without being over-the-top, interesting without being implausible. It's more than you get from the vast majority of thrillers out there right now.
"The Enemy" is a highly-recommendable piece of suspense/detective fiction and an excellent starting point in the series of Jack Reacher novels.