Fin­ished The Enemy by Lee Child. This is one of the many books in his Jack Reacher series.

This book is a pre­quel, in that it shows Reacher in 1990 when he was still a mil­i­tary police offi­cer (in the other books, he’s an ex-MP). In this one, Reacher is sta­tioned in North Car­olina when he gets a call about a gen­eral who has died in a fleabag motel while appar­ently vis­it­ing with a hooker. The general’s death seems to be from a heart con­di­tion, but his brief­case is miss­ing — some­thing which sets off a chain of deadly events and makes Reacher the tar­get of a mas­sive conspiracy …

This is an inter­est­ing addi­tion to the Reacher series and gives the reader a glimpse of what Reacher’s life was like in the mil­i­tary (which is some­thing that I’ve won­dered about from time to time when read­ing the other books). The con­spir­acy is pretty easy to fig­ure out, although Child does throw some nice twists in the mix when it comes to how things were car­ried out and by whom. My only real quib­ble is that the build-up in this book is slow, and it takes a while for the real action to get going. But once it does, Child is in fine form once more.

Thumbs up.

Up next: Devil May Care by Sebas­t­ian Faulks.

Books in my TBR pile: About 15.