New Year's Day, 1990. The Berlin Wall is coming down. Soon America won't have any enemies left to fight. The army is under pressure to downsize. Jack Reacher is the duty Military Police officer on a base in North Carolina when he takes a call reporting a dead soldier. The body was found in a sleazy motel used by local hookers. Reacher tells the local cop to handle it - it sounds like the guy just had a heart attack. But the dead man turns out to have been a two-star general on a secret mission. And then, many miles away, when Reacher goes to the general's house to break the sad news, he finds a battered corpse: the general's wife. Lee Child's new stomach-churning, palm-sweating thriller turns back the clock to Jack Reacher's army days. For the first time we meet a younger Reacher, a Reacher not yet disillusioned with military life. A Reacher with family. A Reacher in dogtags and starched uniform who imposes army discipline, if only in his own pragmatic way. A Reacher as far from the no-credit card, no-last-known-address drifter of the previous eight novels as is possible to imagine.
This the eighth Reacher novel is set eight years before the first novel ‘The Killing Floor’. ‘The Enemy’ is an emotional thrilling roller coaster ride and it’s become my favourite Reacher novel so far. This book sucked me in, it was extremely intense and I raced through the last chapters dying to know the outcome. I kept getting cranky with my husband for interrupting me while I was reading, I NEEDED to get to the end.
Two very big things happen to Reacher in this book, he loses his mother and he loses faith in the people who govern him. We see Reacher start to change and you can see how he eventually turns into the drifter vigilante we all know and love. I really enjoyed seeing Reacher in his army days, reading familiar names that pop up in later books and seeing him interact with his brother.
The ‘case’ is a big one and the who-done-it will keep you entertained and guessing. Mr Child doesn’t disappoint he gives us another action packed thrilling adventure to go on Reacher with. Five out of five stars.
