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Book summary and reviews of The Affair by Lee Child

The Affair by Lee Child

The Affair

A Reacher Novel (Jack Reacher)

by Lee Child

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Sep 2011
    416 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Everything starts somewhere... For elite military cop Jack Reacher, that somewhere was Carter Crossing, Mississippi, way back in 1997. A lonely railroad track. A crime scene. A coverup.

A young woman is dead, and solid evidence points to a soldier at a nearby military base. But that soldier has powerful friends in Washington.

Reacher is ordered undercover - to find out everything he can, to control the local police, and then to vanish. Reacher is a good soldier. But when he gets to Carter Crossing, he finds layers no one saw coming, and the investigation spins out of control.

Local sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux has a thirst for justice - and an appetite for secrets. Uncertain they can trust one another, Reacher and Deveraux reluctantly join forces. Reacher works to uncover the truth, while others try to bury it forever. The conspiracy threatens to shatter his faith in his mission, and turn him into a man to be feared.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Readers expecting new insight or details into Reacher's background will be disappointed, but they'll find all the elements - solid action, wry humor, smart dialogue - that have made this series so popular." - Publishers Weekly

"Exciting and suspenseful, with deceit and cover-ups, violence, and sex, this is another great entry in Child's compelling series."- Library Journal

"The best thing we discover here is the explanation for why Reacher left the Army. By the end of this adventure, he certainly has his reasons." - Kirkus Reviews

"The Affair has its title for a reason: Reacher falls for this small town's beautiful sheriff. Her name is Deveraux, and she acts just like a she-Reacher; she can match him quip for quip, leap for leap, burger for burger. Whether motivated by creative fervor or commercial instinct, Mr. Child has at long last given Reacher sex scenes, but they are stealthily funny: Reacher's idea of sex, like his idea of everything else, is filled with precise calculation." - New York Times, Janet Maslin

This information about The Affair was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Lee Child Author Biography

Photo: Sigrid Estrada

Lee Child was born in the exact geographic center of England, in the heart of the industrial badlands. Never saw a tree until he was twelve. It was the sort of place where if you fell in the river, you had to go to the hospital for a mandatory stomach pump. The sort of place where minor disputes were settled with box cutters and bicycle chains. He's got the scars to prove it.

But he survived, got an education, and went to law school, but only because he didn't want to be a lawyer. Without the pressure of aiming for a job in the field, he figured it would be a relaxing subject to study. He spent most of the time in the university theater - to the extent that he had to repeat several courses, because he failed the exams - and then went to work for Granada Television in ...

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