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The Enemy (Jack Reacher, No. 8) Review

Lee Child tackles the issue of Gays in the Military in this fictional account set in 1990, before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was the law. Child doesn't take sides in the controversy per se, but I was downright shocked when tough, straight and macho Reacher and his female colleague were discussing the topic and he said that he believed that people should be able to be who they are without a big deal being made of it. (I'm paraphrasing, but that's the bottom line.) So as a gay man, it was very refreshing to see such a "tough guy" portrayed like many "tough guys" really are - if it weren't for the fact that they're forced to choose sides on this issue, especially here in 2010, they'd rather people leave them alone and they'll do the same for everyone else. So that, along with Child's general roller-coaster ride of events that spans several countries in a short span of time, make this one of my top five Child novels, probably #2 right behind _Echo Burning_.

The Enemy (Jack Reacher, No. 8) Overview

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.

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Customer Reviews

Republished - Diane Rawls - Albuquerque, NM USA
I would REALLY appreciate it if Amazon would include the ORIGINAL publication date with their listings - this Reacher book is marked with a 2010 publication date - when it was originally published in 2004! I absolutely love the Reacher series - but since I read a LOT, I need the dates to indicate to my feeble memory whether I read this book years ago or not- the titles don't stick. Good book though if you didn't read it way back when -

If you know anything about the Army, don't read this book! - R. Jones - Austin, TX
This is the worst researched book that I have ever read. Just about everything about the Army is wrong. The procedures are wrong. The places are wrong. The descriptions are wrong, The attitudes are wrong. Even the slang is wrong. The only way that you can portray the US Army this way is if you have complete contempt for it. This will be the last Lee Child book that I ever read.

Reacher's Start - OlingerStories -
THE ENEMY is noteworthy in that it takes the reader back to Reacher's days as a MP in the army. His brother and his mother play leading roles, and so does Reacher's distaste of authority. The pages turn quickly and Reacher has his usual body count from those who underestimate him. The ending tries to hold up a high moral line, but it actually doesn't and is the weakest part of the novel. Still, as far as pulp fiction goes, this series is about as good as it gets.

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Friday, September 10, 2010