audiobooks

Lee Child's latest excellent Jack Reacher offering is a prequel chronicling an emotional and conflicted segment of Reacher's military career. Reacher, a major in the military police and Army executive officer in Panama during the U.S. mission to overthrow Noreiaga is abruptly transfered days before New Years Day 1990 to Ft. Bird, North Carolina. He soon learns that other top notch executive officer MP's have inexplicably been transfered to new posts. Reacher's commanding officer, the venerable Colonel Garber has also been curiously restationed. It is a time of major change in the world. The Berlin Wall is about to topple and Communism is disintegrating creating a difficult transition for the cold war based U.S. Army.

Within days of Reacher's new posting in Ft. Bird, a two star general Kramer based in an armored division in Germany is found dead in a seedy hotel close to the base. He was in transit to a conference in California with his staff. Sensitive documents within his possesion appear to be missing. Reacher is summoned to investigate and led to a strip club bar across the way. His theory is that the general sustained a heart attack during an affair with a prostitute. In the bar filled with off duty soldiers, he questions a special forces sergeant Carbone.

Normally a married general expiring during an illicit tryst would probably be covered up to protect the reputation of the senior officer. However within days, General Kramer's wife and Sgt. Carbone are both found brutally bludgeoned to death. Reacher now has a major problem on his hands. Without the backing of his trusted C.O., he joins forces with a capable young female African American lieutenant Summers to help him decipher the murders.

If he doesn't have enough on his mind, Reacher learns from his brother Joe that their mother, living in Paris, is dying of cancer. Reacher finds the time together with his brother to visit his mom. While there they learn a shocking secret part of their mother's wartime experiences in her native France. This serves to bring the sons even closer emotionally to her, making her imminent demise more painful.

Child skillfully conjures up some previously unexplored facets of Reacher's psyche in "The Enemy", while immersing him within a professional dilemma which has the potential to alter his future.

"The Enemy" is Lee Child's eighth Jack Reacher novel - and a prequel to the previous seven. It is New Year's Day 1990, and it is Major Jack Reacher now, an officer in an elite unit of the military police, recently and abruptly reassigned from Panama to acting Provost Marshall of North Carolina's Fort Bird. A visiting General is found dead of an apparent heart attack in a sleazy motel with by-the-hour rates. Not long after that, the same General's wife is found bludgeoned to death in her rural Virginia home, setting the course for an arcane path of treachery reaching the highest levels of the Army. In the search unravel the mystery, Reacher must deal with deceitful Army bureaucrats and Delta Force commandos out for revenge, while grappling with the imminent death of his ailing mother.

"The Enemy" is more a police mystery than the standard Child suspense/thriller fare, but the results are more than satisfying. While it lacks some of the force and adrenalin of some of Child's earlier works, it does fill in some of the background on Child's reclusive hero. We learn much about his French mother, and in her find clues to Reacher's stoic sense of honor and commitment. Reacher's brother - Joe - is like younger brother Jack in many respects. Conversations between Jack and Joe are about as animated as Lincoln and Washington chatting on Mt. Rushmore. The plot - a rather convoluted tale implying high stakes politicking to determine who's on top in the Army following the inevitable post-Berlin War force reductions - is thin and implausible. But not to worry, for as with all Jack Reacher tales, the plot needs merely to be a passable backdrop in which Reacher can show off his martial and mental talents. In short, "The Enemy" is another fast moving installment from Lee Child, sure to please fans of both mystery and suspense genres.

Superman lives!!! Trying to ignore the glaring mistakes of our military in all Lee Child's adventure stories, I have read every one of them and enjoyed them all. Being British, Lee prefers writing about U.S. military but that's OK and I can forgive the booboo's because the story is quick moving and he paints Reacher as quite a hunk! He's invincible and heals quickly! :D

This prequel explains a lot about Reacher's motives and background. His family situation is so sad! And Joe is somewhere deep in the Killing Floor.

If you take this book as gospel, you will be disappointed. Just be glad you can recognize the miliary errors and just enjoy it as a good exciting read.