The Enemy by Lee Child

 

Read between October and November,  could not wait to finish it, but things kept interfering.. First published in hardback in 2004, I read the paperback, 464 pages.  A very outstanding Jack Reacher novel, maybe one of the best, difficult to tell because I like them all.  I thought a lot of late friend Nevin who introduced me to this series  with  Running Blind in 2018.  It was the first one I read and also is published  as The Visitor.  But The Enemy has extensive narrative and descriptions about the Army, political in fighting between divisions particularly Armored and Infantry, much description about Army protocols and traditions.  It begins as Reacher in on duty in his new post at Ft. Bird, North Carolina where he was suddenly, reassigned from Panama to his  surprise.  At the same time several other similar ranking MP's are simultaneously reassigned. and his  commanding officer, Colonel Leon  Garber, ,as well.  A reduction in the military force that will of course affect the Army sets the political infighting ablaze.  As it begins Reacher is called about a dead two star  General Kramer  found dead in a motel   It will turn out Reacher is being set up, but by who and why.  The replacement commander is a longtime bureaucrat and Joe warns Jack about him.  A striving young lieutenant Summer is assigned to work with him and becomes his right hand helper and cohort.  

Page 3,  " 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."  . 

Back Cover  The Enemy

Reacher is contacted by his brother Joe and learns their mother, a widow, who lives in Paris is dying so they make plans to visit.  She does die in this novel and they learn something about her past and activity in WWII in the resistance as a very young girl that they never knew.  It is another interesting tale within a tale, woven  into the main story with expertise by the author..  Page 97,  conversation between their mother the the Reacher brothers,  "Won't you miss us , Mom?"  "Wrong question, she said, I'll be dead.  I won't be missing anything.  It's you that will be missing me.  Like I miss your father.  Like I miss him.  Like I miss my father and mother and grandparents.  It is a part of life, missing the dead."   

Maybe because of where I am in my personal grieving of the passing of Jerry last year but the writing in this novel struck me with the philosophy about  accepting death.  It is something we do as survivors.  Page 363, " Life was unfolding the same way it always had for everyone.  Sooner or later you ended up an orphan.  There was no escaping it.  It had happened that way for a thousand generations.  No point in getting all upset about it."  

Pages 311- 315 about future wars/conflicts and theory, history.  "You know who has done the most for the country?  Who?  Not Armored,  Not the infantry..  The theater is all about the Army Corps of Engineers.  Sherman tanks way back weighed 38 tons and were 9 feet wide.  Now we're all the way down to the MIAI Abrams, which weighs 70 tons and is 11 feet wide.  Every step of the way for 40 years the Corps of Engineers has had work to do.  They've widened roads, hundreds of miles of them, all over ?West Germany.  They've strengthened bridges.  Hell they've built roads and bridges.  Dozens of them.  You want a stream of 70 ton tanks rolling east to battle, you better make damn sure the roads and bridges can take it." 

It takes Reacher going AWOL with Summers, defying orders, forging travel voucher to fly to Germany and back and to CA and back to solve the  crime of who plotted and who killed the General, his wife, his lovers...There is a strange twist with the sexual relationships as  Reacher learns the General was gay.  They must find proof and solve the mystery to clear themselves.  Reacher ends up being demoted from Major to Captain at his own choice, when investigated by JAG over all another surprise for me at the ending of the novel.  This is easily a 5*****.

Back cover

    

.  

The Fallen by David Baldacci

I read this back in July but as with other books have not been posting lately.  However time to get these books moved along to local sale, so here goes.  Anothe winner from Baldacci.  This one is in the Memory Man series which I have not read in order but no matter.  Published 2018, 417 pages. 

Amos Decker is Baldacci's fictional  character, FBI agent with extra ordinary memory due to a football injury.  This occurs in a rust belt small western PA fictitious town, but one that is typical of the rust belt of the area.  From Book Good reads:    ."Amos Decker and his journalist friend Alex Jamison are visiting the home of Alex's sister in Barronville, a small town in western Pennsylvania that has been hit hard economically. When Decker is out on the rear deck of the house talking with Alex's niece, a precocious eight-year-old, he notices flickering lights and then a spark of flame in the window of the house across the way. When he goes to investigate he finds two dead bodies inside and it's not clear how either man died. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. There's something going on in Barronville that might be the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country.     Faced with a stonewalling local police force, and roadblocks put up by unseen forces, Decker and Jamison must pull out all the stops to solve the case. And even Decker's infallible memory may not be enough to save them. "

Besides being an excellent thriller/mystery/ read there is a great amount of description of the nationwide drug/opiod crisis.  One example,  page 268-269..."Right, back in the 80's we had the crack crisis.  The government's position was just say no and if you didn't you went to prison.  Sop we locked u[p million, mostly men from inner cities.  Then came the 90's and Big Pharma decided that Americans weren't taking enough painkillers.  They sort of made paid the fifth vital sign.  Spent billions on ads, payoffs to the doctors, used legist looking organizations and think tanks to make it all seem aboveboard.  No possibility of addiction, no long term negatives was the mantra everyone was spouting.  Turns out all of that was based on faulty research or no research at all.  It's ironic but a l;ot of opioids were initially given out to combat lower back pain.     What's ironic.. Because opioid's actually are pretty ineffectual with chronic lower back pain........"  

5 stars no doubt*****

Fron flap cover

Back flap cover

            

Blue Moon by Lee Child

Appropriate that I post this finally as it has  been moons ago I read this,   in March,2020...but this has been an awful year, besides COVID the plague of US all,  Jerry's cancer diagnosis and being a caretaker since June redirects my efforts.  Diminishing my time from all else...But I do want to send this book on its way to friends so finally posting...Another Reacher thriller.   He is on his way to....on a bus.. when action is about to begin.  “This is a random universe,” Reacher says. “Once in a blue moon things turn out just right.”  This isn’t one of those times.

This excerpt from Good Reads, "Reacher is on a Greyhound bus, minding his own business, with no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Then he steps off the bus to help an old man who is obviously just a victim waiting to happen..."  and this from another online review which was not as complimentary of this one as others, "Jack Reacher lends a hand to an elderly couple under threat from loan sharks and winds up in the midst of an underworld war in the 24th entry in this series (Past Tense, 2018, etc.).  

After Reacher saves an old man from a mugging, he finds out the man and his wife went into hock to get money for their daughter's lifesaving medical treatment. Meanwhile, in the unnamed city where the novel is set, the Albanian and Ukrainian crime bosses who have divvied up the territory are vying to see who can take over for good before the appointment of a new police commissioner. The sudden appearance of Reacher makes each suspect he's an agent for outside forces and accelerates the body count between them. That this is the best premise for a Reacher novel in some time, ..."  And so it begins.  Another Reacher read that I could not put down until the end. and another alliance with an unlikely person a random waitress in this town.    

 I found some of the dialogue amusing, such as the banter about  nuances of who is a better soldier, tougher, etc Marines or Army pages 164-165, including the ex Marine who tells Reacher, Army=aren't really Marines yet." and Reacher's reply, "Marines=muscles are requested intelligence no expected."  This continues along through the novel,  pages 302 where the Marines rescue Army guys and 313 where"If I wanted easy I'd have joined the Marines."    

Another 5***** 

2 more Jack Reacher Novels by Lee Child Die Trying and One Shot

Two more Jack Reacher's by Lee Child as I work thru the stack I  scooped at the book sale last fall.  I am fascinated by these featuring that bad ass, Jack Reacher and cannot read them fast enough.  I read Die Trying December thru January, published in 1998, paperback edition has 422 pages.  In this Reacher, ex Army Major, MP is an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time as seems to happen to this character.   A mysterious  woman is kidnapped and the ransom amount is exorbitant. Reacher happened along and was  taken along for the ride.  Although she urges him to escape and leave her, and doesn't ask for his help,  Reacher will help her. 

 It begins, first paragraph, "Nathan Rubin died because he got brave.  Not the sustained kind of thing that wins you a medal in a war but the split second kind of blurting outrage that gets you killed on the street." and page 2, " Jack Reacher stayed alive because he got cautious.  He got cautious because he heard an echo from his past.  He had a lot of past and the echo was from the worst part of it. He had 13 years in the Army and the only time he was wounded it wasn't with a bullet"   page 3, "He was standing next to a woman.  He was holding her arm.  He had never seen her before.  .....They were in Chicago, Center of the city, a busy sidewalk., a Monday last day of June.  Broad daylight, bright summer sunshine.  ..." 

 Page 50, " He had no problem with how he had gotten grabbed up in the first place, just a freak of chance had put him alongside Holly Johnson at the exact time the snatch was going down.  He was comfortable with that.  He understood freak chances.  Life was built out of freak chances, however much people would like to pretend otherwise."  Their abduction  in the van will take time across the Midwest.  Holly will have military connections too. 

As in all the Reacher novels, there is a lot to learn about topography and observation and usually  details about something I would never have known.  Pages 258-259  detail firing a sniper rifle, from the mechanical engineering of the rifle, optics and geophysics. The novel twists with  unsuspected characters, someone in the FBI is crooked, or is it higher in the military.   Another 5 *****.novel.  

Original copy of One Shot

The second is One Shot, the only Reacher novel to have been made into a movie, and now that I have read several of these and am familiar with the physical description of Jack Reacher, I cannot understand why Tom Cruise would have been cast as the character, he simply does not fit the description, too short, etc.  That is another  discussion.  I recall enjoying the movie but really did not remember much of it and read the book totally unaware of the outcome.  Copyright in 2005, but mass market published in 2012 by Dell, the paperback edition has 466 pages and a prologue into another Reacher novel. 

 It is set in the heartland too, Indiana,  page 1 begins, "Friday, Five o'clock in the afternoon.  Maybe the hardest time to move unobserved through a city.  Or maybe the easiest.  Because at five o'clock on a Friday nobody pays attention to anything except the road ahead."   In this novel Reacher's military background  proves  that all is not as it seems, the shooter is not the one who confesses to the massacre, Jack knows but no one else does.  

Reacher is drawn back into the  back story of James Barr. a former Army sniper who got away with murder in the Army and yet asks for Reacher.  More characters of intrigue, the cop, detective, DA, Helen Rodin who is the defense attorney and also the DA's daughter,  and a reporter, Ann Yanni,  who will become  Reacher's alibi.   

Of interest in this book was the information about boat shoes on page 288, .."boat shoes had been invented by a yachtsman looking for better grip on slippery decks.  The guy had taken a regular smooth soled  athletic shoe and cut tiny stripes into the rubber with a straight razor.  He had experimented and ended up with the cuts lateral and wavy and close together.  The had done the trick, like a miniature tire tread.  A whole new industry had grown up."   Reacher will also have a brief reunification with a former Army fling, Eileen Hutton sent up  from the Pentagon to cover the story  about Barr.  Another 5 *****

New copy of One Shot

UPDATE 2025 JUNE;  Foolishly I did not kept all my copies as I read the novels.  Once Amazon Prime started producing the series  with Jack Richison, a great actor with  dynamic portrayal and physical resemblance to Reacher, I began to wish I had all the novels.  So I began to search book sales but there was a massive interest now in the books, popularity surged.   So I  would pick up any I could find and began to even order new copies from Amazon.  Here is a copy of the newer copy of One Shot that now is on my shelf and will stay.  

The Midnight Line Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child

I read this novel in September, bought it at Sam's as a paperback.  It is a more recent Reacher novel, published 2017, 500 pages.  It begins on a blank intro page, "So far in our history, nearly two million Purple Hearts have been awarded.  This book is respectfully dedicated to each and every recipient."   This tale finds Reacher in my neck of the woods, traveling through WI and on his way to Rapid City, searching for the person whose West Point class ring he retrieved in a Pawn Shop. 

 As the novel begins Michelle Chang has left Reacher, Page 1, "He had seen such notes before.  They all said the same thing.  Either directly or indirectly.  Chang's note was indirect.  And more elegant than most.  Not in terms of presentation.  It was a ballpoint scrawl on motel notepaper gone wavy with a damp.  But elegant in terms of expression.  She had used a simile to explain and flatter and apologize all at once.  She had written, "You're like New York City.  I love to visit, but I could never live there."  He did what he always did.  He let her go.  He understood.  No apology required.  He couldn't live anywhere.  His whole life was a visit."  

This novel includes information about and references to opioids, military injuries, inadequate VA care, PTSD, injured war veterans how the injuries introduce them to addictive pain killers and turn them into addicts, pharmaceuticals, corporations, the DEA,  South Dakota and Wyoming and the history of heroin use in the United States.  

We had just been to South Dakota and Wyoming in August so this was apt reading for me.  A brief summary the West Point ring belongs to an ex Army Major who was severely wounded in Afghanistan.  Reacher encounter many along his search to return the ring because he know it took work to get through West Point especially for a female.  He meets the sister of the ex Major who is also searching for her and had hired a private detective.  Along the way Reacher goes into action to get information from links he uncovers like the mobster running a laundromat in Rapid City and the drug dealers and affiliates the guy employs. 

 Pages 11-12 have classic description about motorcycle riders, an abundant group through 

these parts and across the Midwest especially in the spring, summer and fall months.  "Bikers were as split as Baptists.  All the same, but different. "

Page 282, "Reacher was not a superstitious man.  Not given to flights of fancy or sudden forebodings or existential dread of any kind.  But he woke with the dawn and he stayed in bed.  He felt unwilling to move.....Sometimes you woke up and you knew for sure from history and experience and weary intuition that the brand new day would bring nothing good at all."

Another 5 ***** read.   

The Jack Reacher Novels by Lee Child Running Blind

Read Running Blind, my first one in July and have a new favorite to read through entire series.  Through a friend who sent me this first book, Running Blind and introduced me thereby to author, Lee Child,  and this series of action, thriller, mystery, etc genre featuring the Jack Reacher character.  I have not been this excited to read an entire collection since back long ago in the 1960's when I first discovered Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.   Running Blind is a paperback, but first published in 2000, by Jove Books of New York, 550 pages

Jack Reacher is an ex U.S. Army Major, Military Police and then some, who is now a civilian and who travels the country very lightly, with toothbrush only, some cash,  going wherever he takes a notion and dealing with bad guys.  In this novel women are being murdered across the country," victims of a disciplined and clever killer who leaves no trace evidence, no fatal wounds, no signs of struggle and no clues to an apparent motive."    taken from the back cover, picture to the right.  

From the first page, the novel grabbed me and I could not put it down.  I do not know how I missed this author and this character, a tough guy who takes no guff and does things his way.  Page 1--" People say that knowledge is power.  The more knowledge, the more power..  Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lowery?  All of them?  Not guessed them, not dreamed them but really knew them?  What would you do?" ..

.Page 2, "Life is full of decisions and judgments and guesses and it gets to the point where you're so accustomed to making them you keep right on making them even when you don't strictly need to.  You get into a what if thing, and you start speculating about what would you do if some problem was yours instead of somebody else's.  It gets to be a habit.  It was a habit Jack Reacher had in spades."  Page 9,  "The dynamics of the city.  The strong terrorize the weak.  They keep on at it, like they always have, until they come up against somebody stronger with some arbitrary humane reason for stopping them.  Somebody like Reacher."  And page 59, the description of Reacher, from hyper sensitive,  Agent in charge, Nelson Blake, Quantico, Serial Crimes Unit, with Special Agent Julia  Lamar,  "No there are millions, you conceited son of a bitch, she said.  But then we started narrowing it down some.  A smart guy, a loner, Army, knew both victims, movements unaccounted for, a brutal vigilante personality.  That narrowed it down from millions to thousandths to hundreds to tens maybe all the way down to you."  Page 69, some background on a house Reacher inherits from his late friend, commander, mentor Leon Garber, Jodie's (his current girlfriend) father.  Leon had been a prince among men, rough and ready and Reacher loved him like a father.  "  It was a half million dollar house, slice of prime real estate standing proudly on the Hudson opposite West Point, and it was a comfortable bldg. but it represented a big problem.  It anchored him in a way which made him profoundly uncomfortable.  .Page 70, ".And the idea of property worried him.  His whole life he had never owned more than would fit into his pockets. ......He had a wristwatch it was Army issue, so it started out theirs and became his when they didn't ask for it back.   And that was it.  Shoes for his feet, clothes on his back, small bills in his pants, big bills in his wallet, a toothbrush in his pocket, and a watch on his wrist."  

Page 79 has the source of the title of this novel, as Blake and Lamar ask Reacher for help catching the killer who preys on ex US Army gals.  "So help us catch her killer.   No.   Without somebody like you, we're just running blind.  No...I'm asking for you help here"  

Back cover

I got a kick out of the reference to granite kitchen counter tops in a civilized world, Page 236, where Reacher is talking with Jodie. It demonstrates how this author plants interesting diversions in the midst of action.  I related it to our now year old upgrade, remodel of our kitchen with the new granite counter tops and new multi surface back splash that took far too long on back order but does look elegant. "He sat on her kitchen stool and leaned his forearms on her counter top, spread his finger wide and placed his palms down flat.  The counter top was cold.  It was some kind of granite, gray and shiny, milled to reveal tiny quartz speckles, throughout its surface.  The corners and angles were radiused into perfect quarter circles.  It was an inch thick and probably very expensive.  it was a civilized product.  It belonged right there in a world where people agree to labor forty hours or a hundred or two hundred and then exchange the remuneration they get for installations they hope will make their kitchens look nice inside their expensive remodeled buildings high above Broadway. "

And besides the action and intrigue, the author adds tidbits here and there of historical interest, like page 371 references about why Eisenhower built the US Interstates.  " "Why do you think interstates were built?  Not so the Harper family could drive from Aspen to Yellowstone Park on vacation.  So the Army could move troops and weapons around, fast and easy.>     They were?  Reacher nodded, "Sure they were.  Eisenhower built them in the fifties, height of the Cold War thing, and Eisenhower was a West Pointer, first and last."

I give this book  5 ***** and recommend Jack Reacher novels to anyone who relishes action, intrigue, suspense.  I have accumulated several others now and will be reading them all. 

UPATE JUNE 2025 This was another I didi not keep and have yet to fin a copy to replace and add to my collection.  It was a dumb thing to do, should have kept all the copioes,  

Divine Justice by David Baldacci

Read this novel in February and will be passing along to Library sale, but another as always excellent Baldacci read.  It is an old one from 2008, 387 pages,  recently acquired at a sale and like all Baldacci can be read out of order, although his one continues with the characters of the Camel Club and Oliver Stone.  This could very well have been written or be applied today.  It high lights coal mining, the lives, hills and folks who live there and  the timely horror of rampant prescription drug abuse, opiods of today.  

From page 150, " There was right and wrong.  Although those lines got blurred all the time.  Justice and injustice too were often all over the place, he knew.  There were no easy answers and whatever road you took, be it the high, low or more likely somewhere in between, half the people  would hate the result and half would applaud.  And the hell of the thing was in a way they'd both be right."

Page 213, " Experience without cynicism was a sure sign your brain had dry rotted and you hadn't bothered to notice.  He went into every high level meeting these days knowing there were at least three agendas and also knowing he'd only be told one of them."  Sounds like bureaucracy and governmental politics of today, some things do no change. 

This is another 5 *****.  A page turner that I read to get a break from another book that I have been struggling to finish and needed a break in reading.  Sometimes I do that, set one aside and  pick up diversion.  Baldacci never disappoints.