Customer Reviews
Clipped prose leavened with irony and wit. - By: R. Nicholson-morton, 12 May 2008 
It's become quite popular, it seems. Going back in time. Reviewing beginnings. Take Smalllville, the early years of Superman. Or Enterprise, the pre-Shatner Star Trek universe. And then there's Casino Royale, the Bond movies going back to his early Secret Service days. Here, Lee Child does something similar with his hero, telling us about Jack Reacher's time in the Army - at the beginning of the 1990s, as the Berlin Walll started coming down - before he became a rootless civilian.
We get the usual clipped prose leavened with irony & wit. Reacher is a hard man & doesn't like bad people. So when he finds himself mysteriously re-assigned out of Panama to a relative backwater, he starts asking questions - until he is callled out to investigate the apparent natural death of a two-star general. Then he starts getting answers, the kind that don't sit well with his strong sense of fairness. The conspiracy he uncovers seems to go a long way up. Here we get to see how the Reacher we know developed.
As a special investigator in the Army, he doesn't care about rank & its privileges, only the truth. When a colonel asks him how the general died, Reacher replies, `He had a heart attack.' The colonel persists: `Where?' Reacher: `Inside his chest cavity.' There's plenty of this dry, clipped humour.
But there's more here than a mystery. We get to meet Jack Reacher's brother Joe & his mother. There are some poignant moments, especiallly on grieving. It comes as no surprise, having read the detailed earlier seven novels, that Child manages to make you believe he actuallly served in the US Army, rather than being a British-born TV producer who took up writing after being made redundant.
`Storywise,' he says, `I was probably pointed in the right direction by the John D McDonald's Travis McGee series most of alll, plus a little Spenser, with a seasoning of Alistair MacLean...' when creating Jack Reacher.
Apparently he latched onto the name when in a supermarket. As he's talll, he's often asked by little old ladies to reach up to the top shelves for them. So his wife Jane commented, `Hey, if this writing thing doesn't pan out, you could always be a reacher in a supermarket.' Reacher, he thought - a good name. And a great character.
Simply the Best - By: Mr. A. C. Balchin, 25 Apr 2008 
I have read several of the Jack Reacher novels & this one has to be my favourite so far.
Showing a rare glimpse of Reachers past I reallly enjoyed the fast pace, twists & turns. I could not put this down from start to end, an exellent buy!
A FIND ! - By: J, 22 Feb 2008 Im new to the world of Reacher, & I found this book great! A wonderful tonic to a hard days work! Since reading this & Tripwire I aim to read alll of Lee childs novels. However, a part of me does wish that I had read them in order, although each individual book does stand up on its own.
Another Masterpiece ! - By: Sarah Gooding, 23 Jan 2008 From the moment I picked 'The Enemy' up until the last word, I was captivated & enthrallled. Anther great Jack Reacher adventure which twists & turns until it concludes. While writing this review I would also like to recommend another excellent thriller, 'The Constantine Legacy' by Andrew Towning.
Another Great read book - By: Lucy Parks, 27 Nov 2007 Child does it again. Despite soaking the book on the first day of the holiday, i still managed to become absorbed with the book till the very last word. Awesome
