Winner of the 2005 BookBrowse Ruby Award for Most Popular Book in Category
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.
'The Enemy' is a treat for existing fans, because it's a prequel to the other books, taking Reacher back to his days as a military policeman at the end of the Cold War, revealing key information about why he became the person he is in the later books. Because this is a prequel it's also a great place for new readers to discover this excellent author.
Media Reviews
Publishers Weekly
The latest entry in what is arguably today's finest thriller series flashes back to series hero Jack Reacher's days in the military police.....Textured, swift and told in Reacher's inimitably tough voice, this title will hit lists and will convince those who still need convincing that Child has few peers in thrillerdom.
Library Journal - Michele Leber
Child's trademark smart story lines, crisp prose, and nonstop action with a slam-bang finish make this essential for popular fiction collections.
Kirkus Reviews
A fabulously suspenseful prequel that reveals Reacher's character as he uncovers a homicidal cabal of military officers....Child has turned away from formulaic high-jinks to explore his characters instead The result? His best so far.
Booklist - Bill Ott
Starred Review. Known for his hold-your-breath action scenes, Child proves equally adept at portraying how a criminal investigation uses the smallest of building blocks (a yogurt container) to construct a compelling circumstantial case. Combine that with finely textured relationships--always an extra dimension in this series--and you have a novel that takes Child in a new direction (more Michael McGarrity than Stephen Hunter) but does so flawlessly.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by V. Maarse Exciting story, but... The story is good and exciting, but to my opinion Lee Child wants to use too many words to make a point, which in several cases doesn't lead anywhere. Hero is a real superhero and you have to like that not to be a little irritated by that.... Read More
Rated of 5
by Joshua Lim The Enemy wonderful page-turner....quite disappointed (which is quite rare) when the story ends...has become a jack reacher fan as a result of this book...good writing!
Iran has dispatched its most deadly assassin to kill Frank Perry - unless Perry´s protectors can reach him first. A powerful and thrilling novel about how the past can haunt the present.
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U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
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