The Enemy (8th of 18 Reacher Novels) by Lee Child

Goodreads 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.

My thoughts:

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.