Book Details
Title: The Enemy
Author: Lee Child
# of pages: 496
Link to Buy: Amazon.in
Author Profile
Lee Child was born October 29th, 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British TV’s “golden age.” During his tenure his company made Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of 40 as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars’ worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series.
Synopsis
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.
Non Review Rant
I am reading Lee Child these days.
Excerpts / Quotes / Highlights
But French people understand that first you live, and then you die. It’s not an outrage. It’s something that’s been happening since the dawn of time. It has to happen, don’t you see? If people didn’t die, the world would be an awfully crowded place by now.
Review
Another interesting story by Jack Reacher.
This one gives us an insight to the Jack Reacher in army. There are murders and mysteries to solve. At the same time, it was very personal, with the whole time spent with his mother and brother, their conversations. Again when Willard puts the blame on him for the homicide of Carbone and there is some internalized monologue going on.
The story was okay. There are enough twists and turns to keep you engaged.
There are a couple of things that bothered me a little and hindered my reading experience.
- It was too military for me. Too many jargons, and information about it. JUST.TOO.MUCH. I liked the other books better because by then Jack has left the military.
- As I mentioned earlier, it is too descriptive. Every scene is detailed, perhaps readying it for the movie. But those descriptions do not add value to the plot.I had to skip through some very descriptive, unrelated to plot paragraphs. I would have enjoyed it better if it was shorter.I still like Jack Reacher.
Verdict:
Cover: 3 / 5
Plot: 3 / 5
Writing: 3 / 5
Overall rating: 3/5
Shabana Mukhtar
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