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Don’t miss the hit streaming series Reacher! THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING JACK REACHER SERIES • “A thriller that gallops at a breakneck pace.”—Chicago Sun-Times
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 one case that changes everything. For Jack Reacher, this is that case.
New Year’s Day, 1990. In a North Carolina motel, a two-star general is found dead. His briefcase is missing. Nobody knows what was in it. Within minutes Reacher has his orders: Control the situation. Within hours the general’s wife is murdered. Then the dominoes really start to fall.
Somewhere inside the vast worldwide fortress that is the U.S. Army, Reacher 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—against an enemy he didn’t know he had. And against a conspiracy more chilling, ingenious, and treacherous than anyone could have guessed.
The Enemy, like most of the books in the Jack Reacher series, can be read as a standalone thriller.
Don’t miss the hit streaming series Reacher! THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING JACK REACHER SERIES • “A thriller that gallops at a breakneck pace.”—Chicago Sun-Times
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 one case that changes everything. For Jack Reacher, this is that case.
New Year’s Day, 1990. In a North Carolina motel, a two-star general is found dead. His briefcase is missing. Nobody knows what was in it. Within minutes Reacher has his orders: Control the situation. Within hours the general’s wife is murdered. Then the dominoes really start to fall.
Somewhere inside the vast worldwide fortress that is the U.S. Army, Reacher 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—against an enemy he didn’t know he had. And against a conspiracy more chilling, ingenious, and treacherous than anyone could have guessed.
The Enemy, like most of the books in the Jack Reacher series, can be read as a standalone thriller.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
As serious as a heart attack. Maybe those were Ken Kramer's last words, like a final explosion of panic in his mind as he stopped breathing and dropped into the abyss. He was out of line, in every way there was, and he knew it. He was where he shouldn't have been, with someone he shouldn't have been with, carrying something he should have kept in a safer place. But he was getting away with it. He was playing and winning. He was on top of his game. He was probably smiling. Until the sudden thump deep inside his chest betrayed him. Then everything turned around. Success became instant catastrophe. He had no time to put anything right.
Nobody knows what a fatal heart attack feels like. There are no survivors to tell us. Medics talk about necrosis, and clots, and oxygen starvation, and occluded blood vessels. They predict rapid useless cardiac fluttering, or else nothing at all. They use words like infarction and fibrillation, but those terms mean nothing to us. You just drop dead is what they should say. Ken Kramer certainly did. He just dropped dead, and he took his secrets with him, and the trouble he left behind nearly killed me too.
I was alone in a borrowed office. There was a clock on the wall. It had no second hand. Just an hour hand, and a minute hand. It was electric. It didn't tick. It was completely silent, like the room. I was watching the minute hand, intently. It wasn't moving.
I waited.
It moved. It jumped ahead six degrees. Its motion was mechanical and damped and precise. It bounced once and quivered a little and came to rest.
A minute.
One down, one to go.
Sixty more seconds.
I kept on watching. The clock stayed still for a long, long time. Then the hand jumped again. Another six degrees, another minute, straight-up midnight, and 1989 was 1990.
I pushed my chair back and stood up behind the desk. The phone rang. I figured it was someone calling to wish me a happy new year. But it wasn't. It was a civilian cop calling because he had a dead soldier in a motel thirty miles off-post.
"I need the Military Police duty officer," he said.
I sat down again, behind the desk.
"You got him," I said.
"We've got one of yours, dead."
"One of mine?"
"A soldier," he said.
"Where?"
"Motel, in town."
"Dead how?" I asked.
"Heart attack, most likely," the guy said.
I paused. Turned the page on the army-issue calendar on the desk, from December 31st to January 1st.
"Nothing suspicious?" I said.
"Don't see anything."
"You seen heart attacks before?"
"Lots of them."
"OK," I said. "Call post headquarters."
I gave him the number.
"Happy New Year," I said.
"You don't need to come out?" he said.
"No," I said. I put the phone down. I didn't need to go out. The army is a big institution, a little bigger than Detroit, a little smaller than Dallas, and just as unsentimental as either place. Current active strength is 930,000 men and women, and they are as representative of the general American population as you can get. Death rate in America is around 865 people per 100,000 population per year, and in the absence of sustained combat soldiers don't die any faster or slower than regular people. On the whole they are younger and fitter than the population at large, but they smoke more and drink more and eat worse and stress harder and do all kinds of dangerous things in training. So their life expectancy comes...
About the Author-
Lee Child is the author of nineteen New York Times bestselling Jack Reacher thrillers, ten of which have reached the #1 position. All have been optioned for major motion pictures; the first, Jack Reacher, was based on One Shot. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in almost a hundred territories. A native of England and a former television director, Lee Child lives in New York City.
Reviews-
Starred review from March 22, 2004 The latest entry in what is arguably today's finest thriller series (Persuader , etc.) flashes back to series hero Jack Reacher's days in the military police. It's New Year's Eve 1990, the Soviet Union is about to collapse and the military is on tenterhooks, wondering how a changed globe will affect budgets and unit strengths, when the body of a two-star general is found in a motel near Fort Bird, N.C. Investigating is Reacher, 29, an MP major who's just been transferred from Panama—one of dozens of top MPs swapped into new posts on the same day, he later learns. Missing from the general's effects is a briefcase that, it's also revealed later, contained an agenda for a secret meeting of army honchos connected to an armored division. Then the general's wife is found bludgeoned to death at home and, soon after, a third body surfaces, of a slain gay Delta Force soldier whose murder contains clues pointing to Reacher as culprit. With Summer, a young black female lieutenant MP at his side (and, eventually, in his bed), Reacher digs deep, in his usual brilliant and violent way, butting against villainous superior officers, part of a grand conspiracy, as well as against members of Delta Force who think that Reacher killed their colleague. Unlike recent Reacher tales, the novel is as much mystery as thriller, as Reacher and Summer sift for and put together clues, but the tension is nonstop. There's a strong personal element as well, involving Reacher's relationship with his brother and dying mother, which will make the novel of particular interest to longstanding fans of the series. Textured, swift and told in Reacher's inimitably tough voice, this title will hit lists and will convince those who still need convincing that Child has few peers in thrillerdom. Agent, Darley Anderson.
February 15, 2004 Military cop Jack Reacher faces a case that will change his life.
Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 5, 2004 Child (The Persuader , etc.) brings back his intrepid hero, Jack Reacher, for another excellent mystery, which steps back in time to the eventful first few weeks of 1990. The Berlin Wall has just come crashing down, marking an end to the Cold War, and as a result, the U.S. Army is facing a massive restructuring of purpose and personnel. During this turbulent time, 29-year-old Reacher, an MP major stationed to a base in North Carolina, is called on to investigate the death of a two-star general found dead in a seedy motel. Veteran reader Wolf, who has given voice to Reacher in seven previous novels, slips easily into this character; his calm, thoughtful delivery fits perfectly with Reacher's contemplative first-person narration. Wolf uses his voice to draw listeners into Reacher's investigation, as the MP ponders each clue and follows a trail of cover-ups and murder to the highest echelons of the military. Although Wolf struggles a bit with his French accents, his narration complements one of the best novels in Child's series. Simultaneous release with the Delacorte hardcover (Forecasts, Mar. 22).
Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"A fabulously suspenseful prequel.... [Lee Child's] best so far."
Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Textured, swift, and told in Reacher's inimitably tough voice ... Child has few peers in thrillerdom."
Rocky Mountain News
"The best showcase of Child's talent to date. .... one of the best thriller writers at work."
Orlando Sentinel
"The Enemy sizzles with suspense and action. Child sets a breathless pace."
St. Petersburg Times
"A rip-roaring read from the first page to the last ."
Seattle Times
"[Jack Reacher is]. . .the thinking reader's action hero a surprisingly tender combination of chess master and G.I. Joe."
Playboy
"Will keep you guessing until the final page."
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Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
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