The Enemy (Jack Reacher)

by Lee Child

2009

Status

Checked out

Publication

Dell (2009), 496 pages

Description

Fiction. Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:Jack Reacher. Hero. Loner. Soldier. Soldierâ??s son. An elite military cop, he was one of the armyâ??s brightest stars. But in every copâ??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 Yearâ??s Day, 1990. The Berlin Wall is coming down. The world is changing. And in a North Carolina â??hot-sheetsâ?ť 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 canâ??t be controlled. Within hours the generalâ??s wife is murdered hundreds of miles away. Then the dominoes really start to fall. Two Special Forces soldiersâ??the toughest of the toughâ??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 Reacherâ??an ordinarily untouchable investigator for the 110th Special Unitâ??is being set up as a fall guy with the worst enemies a man can have. But Reacher wonâ??t quit. Heâ??s fighting a new kind of war. And heâ??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 didnâ??t know he had. With his French-born mother dyingâ??and divulging to her son one last, stunning secretâ??Reacher is forced to question everything he once believedâ?¦about his family, his career, his loyaltiesâ??and himself. Because this soldierâ??s son is on his way into the darkness, where he finds a tangled drama of desperate desires and violent deathâ??and a conspiracy more chilling, ingenious, and treacherous than anyo… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member dougwood57
If you have not read Lee Child before, do NOT start with this book - like I did. I picked up this book on the recommendation of my brother-in-law and that's another bone I have to pick with him. In fairness, he recommended Lee Child and Jack Reacher, not 'The Enemy' in particular.

'The Enemy' fills
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in the back story of Reacher's life and long-time readers will likely appreciate that, but not yet being a long-time reader, I wouldn't know if that saves this book or not. I like action/adventure books (Robert Ludlum, Frederick Forsyth, John Case - I've even choked down many of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan paperweights), so I should like Lee Child and Jack Reacher, but this book did not do it for me. Careful police work and some bare-knuckle action led to an implausible (OK, stupid and silly) climax.

But, since I really do respect my bro-in-law (after all, he also recommended Alan Furst) and so many other readers also rave about the Jack Reacher series, I will likely give Child another go.
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LibraryThing member josbookshelf
According to a guy I met at the bookstore, I’d be doing myself a favor by picking up this book. Well, why not, I said to myself, it’s on sale and it’s got all these glowing reviews by Newsweek, New York Times, USA Today, Chicago Sun-Times,…

I was sadly disappointed. The book did not live up
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to the hype. Maybe I was just too ill (had a fever at the time I was reading it) to appreciate it or I was expecting too much from it.

I liked the beginning pages, though. It was the middle part—where the hero, Reacher and his lieutenant, Summer, investigates the crimes — that left me flat and bored.

I had to read on though, because the good part might just be toward the end. I was, in part, right. The end was a surprise as the hero, Reacher, does something I never expected a hero to do. So, that was OK.

But overall, the characters were all too remote —so stingy with emotions. It’s as if they actually reveled in their stoicism. Maybe the author has this “macho thing”. For instance, Reacher and Summer have sexual relations in the story but as the case closes, Reacher never sees nor hears from her again? Huh? What ever happened to cellphones and e-mails? It’s not as if the story was set in the 50’s.

Oh well, the book was not a total waste of time. The author peppers it with interesting bits of trivia on weapons, tanks, etc. These made up for the book’s rather dull characters.

Entertainment Weekly commented, “[Child] emerges as a worthy successor to Tom Clancy. ” I’ve read Tom Clancy and enjoyed him immensely. I don’t think Lee Child’s style comes very close to Tom Clancy’s power to thrill. But then, this is the first novel I’ve read by this author. So perhaps his other lauded work, The Persuader, might just get me to change my mind.

My Mark : Mediocre
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LibraryThing member infjsarah
Enjoyable Jack Reacher story set in his personal past of when he was a military policeman. We meet his brother and his mother and see him make the moral decision which will lead to his demotion. Another enjoyable read.
LibraryThing member Reader1066
The Enemy is the eight book in the Jack Reacher series. It does something different than all the other Reacher books. All of the books to this point are parts of Reacher's life after he left the army. The Enemy is the first book that deals with a case that takes place while Reacher was still in.

The
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Enemy takes place at the end of the Cold War, just a few months after the Berlin Wall came down. It starts with a dead general, followed by two other deaths. They look like a coincidence, but you (and Reacher) have this feeling that they're related. Like the other Reacher books, this mystery is laid out in strange clues that don't makes sense until near the end and then everything falls into place.
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LibraryThing member Aloel
New Year's Day, 1990. The Berlin Wall is coming down. The Cold War is ending. Soon America won't have any enemies left. The Army won't have anybody to fight. Things are going to change. Jack Reacher is the Military Police duty officer on a base in North Carolina when he takes a call reporting a
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dead soldier in a hot-sheets motel. Reacher tells the local cops to handle it—heart attacks happen all the time.

But why is Reacher in North Carolina, instead of Panama, where the action is? Then the dead man turns out to have been a two-star general who should have been in Europe. And when Reacher goes to the general's house to break the news, he finds another corpse: the general's wife. What is he dealing with here? The last echoes of the old world... or the first shocks of the new?

Winner of 2005 Nero, Barry and (yes, this is not a typo) Jack Reacher awards. The Nero Award, for literary excellence in the mystery genre, is awarded by The Wolfe Pack. The Barry Award for Best Novel of the Year is awarded by Deadly Pleasures magazine. The Jack Reacher Award win was the first annual award presented by Crime Spree Magazine and it was for the very readable, appealing-to-every-age, Jack Reacher novels!
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LibraryThing member MSWallack
This may have been my favorite Jack Reacher novel. The mystery was interesting, the process of solving it was interesting, the characters were interesting. OK, so I found it interesting. Plus, the book offered plenty of opportunities for Reacher to be Reacher (with a bonus of getting to see Reacher
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react to Delta Force soldiers). I particularly enjoyed seeing how Reacher behaved while still in the military (this book takes place a number of years before Killing Floor and is therefore the first book chronologically in the Reacher series). An additional bonus was the opportunity to see Reacher interact with both his brother and mother. Highly recommended (but, despite the fact that this book is chronologically first, it should not be read before Killing Floor).
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LibraryThing member IrishHolger
As usual for the Jack Reacher novels, this is a quick and entertaining read. As usual also, the mystery isn't all that mysterious. Maybe it is just me, but I have yet to come across a Jack Reacher novel in which I don't smell the big surprise a few hundred pages before it is revealed to the
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readers.
Still, it is good, undemanding airport literature.
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LibraryThing member ague
Reacher is a hard guy military police detective. He reminds me of Spenser in novels by Robert Parker, but without the humor. He's a great character. The book begins with a heart attack. It ends with things he never does and people he never sees again. I actually read this book twice, years apart,
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and I almost never read a book twice. Yet it was still great.
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LibraryThing member edwardsgt
Another excellent Reacher story, this time it is back in 1990 and he is still a Major in the MP. Europe is changing with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the US Army is feeling under threat with its future role in question. This impacts Reacher who suddenly finds himself posted from Panama back to
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Fort Bird in N Carolina and investigating the death of a General on his patch on New Year's Eve. Excellent sounding military detail, with strongly drawn characters and intriguing plot which keeps you guessing to the final pages.
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LibraryThing member Djupstrom
The enemy was a pretty standard military mystery. Stale plot.
LibraryThing member reading_fox
The usual fare.

This time we are taken back to Jack's early life while still serving in the US army as an MP major. Sunddenly transfered to a new base, he has to cope with the unexpected death of a 2-star general, the repercussions this invokes.

Limited violence compared to some, Jack has to be in
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full investigative form which is quite enjoyable. How accurate the descriptions of the US army bases and lifestyles are, only the author knows, but they don't detract from the plot without being too explicit either. The plot is somplex and the motives of the opposition byzantine - not wholly belivable, but it is fast paced and you can skip over the worst of the unlikely flaws. We get some development of Jacks character and background through the interaction with his family. This does bog down the plot a bit as it is a complete sidetrack, but for those who have followed Jack's progress through several books it is a welcome explanation.

Fun and fast muc like the others.
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LibraryThing member nbmars
This book is not the latest in Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” series, but it merits a distinctive look, for reasons I’ll delineate below.

Lee Child books are crime/suspense/thrillers, some of which feature Jack Reacher, “hero, loner, soldier.” Short, clipped sentences describe plots that are
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not too gory, occasionally a bit obvious, but engaging enough to keep one burning the midnight oil to turn the pages.

“The Enemy” is an earlier book in the series involving Jack Reacher, who in this “episode” is a 29-year-old Military Police Office, a Major of the 110th Special Unit, newly transferred at the end of 1989 to Fort Bird, North Carolina.

Shortly after he arrives, a 2-star general is found dead in a nearby sleazy motel. Reacher picks an attractive woman MP, Lieutenant Summer, to help him solve the string of crimes that concatenate from the murder.

This particular book is worth reading for a different reason. The real issue of interest is not the murders per se, but the situation (elucidated by Child) that the military was facing as the USSR was disintegrating. Since WWII, the resources and energy of the U.S. military focused on gearing up for a possible confrontation with the Soviet Union. When the Berlin Wall crumbled at the end of 1989, so did the results of an entire 40-some years of military preparation. Suddenly, the traditional enemy was gone, and a host of weaponry, infrastructure, strategies, agendas, and careers were on the brink - no longer of war, but of obsolescence.

The analysis of how much the military was shaped after the war by the perceived threat from the USSR is very thought-provoking. The descriptions of the different kinds of tanks in use and what they were good for; the kind of roads necessary to support them; and the costs and personnel involved, will give you a lot of insight into the current problems faced by the U.S.

The military and political information is fascinating, but there are some other gems of insight too – like this one when Jack and his brother Joe face the death of their mother:

“Life,” Joe said. “What a completely weird thing it is. A person lives sixty years, does all kinds of things, knows all kinds of things, feels all kinds of things, and then it’s over. Like it never happened at all.”

“We’ll always remember her.”

“No, we’ll remember parts of her. The parts she chose to share. The tip of the iceberg. The rest, only she knew about. Therefore the rest already doesn’t exist. As of now.”

We smoked another cigarette each and sat quiet. Then we walked back, slowly, side by side, a little burned out, at some kind of peace.

Recommendation: Even if you don’t like crime/thriller/mysteries, this book contains some fascinating political analysis you aren’t apt to get in such an entertaining format. Thus I recommend this book over others of the Lee Child Jack Reacher series, primarily for the insight it confers into international relations.
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LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
The Enemy opens with a heart attack. A two-star general is found dead of an apparent heart attack. Within hours his wife is murdered. Within days two special forces soldiers are murdered, one at a time. At the center of each death is Jack Reacher, a complicated military cop. Ordinarily considered
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one of the best, suddenly Reacher is starting to look like a suspect instead. Normally a loner, Reacher finds himself working with a partner trying to clear his name. It is obvious he is being set up and Reacher will stop at nothing to get to the truth including going AWOL and much worse. The Enemy is peppered with military jargon and violence but not overwhelmingly so. Reacher has a likable character. He is human enough to do the wrong thing from time to time. How he gets out of the trickier situations really makes the story. I was fascinated from start to finish.
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LibraryThing member blush48
I wanted to read the first story (chronologically) about Jack Reacher before the movie comes out with Tom Cruise in December. What a great story!!! Reacher is an Army MP officer who has to investigate the murder of a General near his post. Subsequent murders follow, which don't seem to be
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connected. Reacher finds all kinds of protocols broken, rules not followed, personnel flying from country to country - - one step ahead of Jack.

This is the first book I've read by this author, but it sure won't be my last!!! Enjoy!
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LibraryThing member SunnySD
An unexpected reassignment, a dead general on New Year's Eve, and a missing briefcase: Reacher figured the army would cover it up, but when the general's wife dies in a home invasion the same night, he pokes his nose in.

Reacher has a mystery to solve, a pretty, competent aide, no aversion to using
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violence to solve a problem, and a thorough knowledge of the grey areas between the rules. My kind of guy.
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LibraryThing member crazybatcow
A bit more "detecting" in this Reacher episode than in the previous ones in the series, and a bit less butt kicking. The story is decent, the mystery decent, the glimpse of Reacher's life before he left the military very enlightening. It was a well-done back story which fleshes Reacher out a bit
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more than his straight up butt kicking stories. Overall a decent read.
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LibraryThing member gogglemiss
This was the first time I have read Lee Child, and I enjoyed the Jack Reacher character. Towards the end, I did get bogged down with too much detail, no matter how hard I had to concentrate. Otherwise, pretty good.
LibraryThing member mikedraper
With the Berlin Wall coming down in 1990, The Cold War was ending. The military was due for a downsizine and certain commanders didn't want to see thier units lessened.

Maj. Jack Reacher is suddenly transferred to a new base and is the duty officer for the Military Police on New Year's Eve. He gets
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a call that a two-star general has been found in a seedy motel, dead of a heart attack. When he goes to the general's home to notify his wife, Reacher finds the genreral's wife has been murdered.

Reacher finds that the general was headed for a meeting and his briefcase, containing the meeting's agenda, is missing. When he continues to investigate, he is ordered to refrain because it could bring bad publicity to the military.

Reacher and a young officer who is assisting him, Lt. Summer, feel that it would be unethical to stop the investigation so at the risk of their careers they continue their search.

There is conflict with a Delta Force unit when one of their men reports that Reacher beat up two civilians without provocation. Later, when the Delta Force sergeant is murdered, the men in his unit give Reacher seven days to find the killer or they will come after him.

This is a page turner in the highest sense of the term. Reacher is one of the best characters in literature and his bravery and dedication are shown here as never before. Many readers wanted to know why Reacher left the military and this story looks back on the events that led to his resignation from active duty.

The story itself has excellent action scenes and Reacher's motives and investigatory actions are properly explained and logical.
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LibraryThing member EBT1002
Okay, it's not great literature, but for what it is, this is as good as it gets. This Reacher novel goes back in time so we start learning more about his life in the military, before he was a rootless hero. It took me a while to get into it, but about halfway through I could say the usual: I dare
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you to tell me you can put a Jack Reacher novel down.
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LibraryThing member AmieG
Definitely not as good of a read as The Persuader. Sometimes Child goes into far too much detail about the various weapons used in the military than I am able to tolerate. Maybe I'm too "girly," but I could care less about which gun is which, how many bullets it takes, who made it and why! There
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were times I scanned ahead on the page to get to the action or dialogue rather than read yet another weapons description.

Was nice to read about Reacher's background, though I am reading the books out of order, which probably doesn't help.
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LibraryThing member Beakif
I was passed this book by a friend of my Mum's. Mum doesn't really like mystery, violence or suspense, but her friend and I had discovered we both thoroughly enjoyed Larssons "Girl With..." trilogy, and she thought I might enjoy this one.

It's the first Lee Child, and therefore the first Jack
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Reacher book I've ever read. I've always thought of them as the male equivalent of the Chick Lit Airport book (a genre in itself), and so I mainly got what I was expecting. A nice, easy read.

The plot was tightly paced and full of detail. I noticed that some reviewers found the military detail overwhelming, but as someone that hasn't read any of the other books in the series, I found the detail helpful. The constant acronyms were slightly off-putting, but I can forgive that.

Some elements of the plot were predictable, but the reasoning of the characters was kept shrouded. I worked out who must have been the main perpetrator, but how and why they were was something I couldn't quite work out in advance of the conclusion.

All in all, I enjoyed the book. It's not the sort of thing I'd normally pick off the shelf, but if I saw one in a charity shop I'd certainly buy it. Maybe I need to go on holiday and find an airport bookshop...
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LibraryThing member rwt42
Said to be a prequel to the Reacher series, the pace was a bit slow but still a good "detective" mystery. Reacher here as a military MP is too embroiled in military minutia and the story flags through much of the middle.
LibraryThing member TomWheaton
I have read all of the books in the Jack Reacher series up to this one and have enjoyed them all, some more than others. This is one that I really liked. It goes back to when Jack was an MP in the Army investigating several murders both in the civilian and armed services sector. Mr. Child has
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developed quite a convoluted plot that keeps the reader guessing right up until the end. There also is a storyline involving Jack's brother and mother that helps fill-in some further information regarding Jack's family life.
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LibraryThing member Reacherfan
This is an unusual Reacher book. All the books to this point, Reacher was out of the Army, but this could be considered a prequal, because Reacher is still in the army.

It's New Year's Day, and a General is found in a motel room, dead. Not only is he dead, but his brief case is missing, and they
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army wants it back. The problem is that the General wasn't alone. Reacher gets the call and he has to sort out what happened. In the process, Reacher has a new Colonel, and he's telling Reacher not to investigate what has happened. Also in the process, a DELTA solider is killed, and they think that Reacher did it. It's up to Reacher to find the truth, no matter where it leads.

While all of this is going on, Reacher gets a call from his brother, and his mom isn't doing well. That's all I really want to say on the plots. There's a lot more going on, but you get the jist of it. I don't want to give away any spoilers.

This is such a great read! It has a lot of plot twists, and fantastic characters that will keep you glued to the end, and still wanting more. If you've read the past Reacher books, then you know what to expect and you won't be let down. If you haven't started and of the Reacher books, then this is a good one to start with. Do your self a favor and pick it up!

I can promise you won't be sorry, I know I wasn't.
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LibraryThing member susandennis
Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels are in that take-me-away genre. They just grab you with the first paragraph and keep you until they are done with you. A two-star general is found in a seedy motel room dead of a heart attack and his brief case is missing. Jack's MP career is quickly on the line when
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no one is interested in finding out more, but him.
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Awards

Audie Award (Finalist — 2005)
Barry Award (Winner — Novel — 2005)
Dilys Award (Nominee — 2005)
Nero Award (Winner — 2005)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2004-05-11

Physical description

496 p.; 4.17 inches

ISBN

0440245990 / 9780440245995

Barcode

1600527
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