The Affair by Lee Child

The Affair by Lee Child, 2011

I have arrested many people, often in groups larger than the one in front of me, but I have never been very good at it. The best arrests run on pure bluster, and I get self-conscious if I have to rant and rave. Better for me to land an early sucker punch, to shut them down right at the very beginning. Except that shouting freeze freeze freeze makes me a little self-conscious, too. The words come out a little tentative. Almost like a request.

But I had with me the best conversation-stopper ever made: a pump-action shotgun. At the cost of one unfired shell, I could make the kind of sound that would freeze any three men to any three spots in the world.

The most intimidating sound ever heard.

Crunch crunch.

My ejected shell hit the leaves at my feet and the three guys froze solid.

I said, "Now the rifles hit the deck."

Normal voice, normal pitch, normal tone.

The sandy-haired guy dropped his rifle. He was pretty damn quick about it. Then went the older guy and last of the three came the wiry one.

"Stand still now," I said. "Don't give me a reason."

Normal voice, normal pitch, normal tone.

They stood reasonably still. Their arms came up a little, out from their sides, slowly, and they ended up a small distance from their bodies, where they held them. They spread their fingers. No doubt they spread their toes inside their boots and sneakers and shoes. Anything to appear unarmed and undangerous.

I said, "And now you take three big paces backward."

They complied, all three guys, all three taking exaggerated stumbling steps, and all three ending up more than a body's length from their rifles.

I said, "And now you turn around."---- (pages 309-310)

The last Jack Reacher novel to deal with Reacher's background as an MP was The Enemy, a fine thriller in its own way, but probably one of my least favorite of the Reacher series (if not my least favorite). Cool insight into Reacher's character, but kind of a snoozy plot without any of the fireworks we expect from Reacher's civilian adventures. The Affair is a direct follow-up to The Enemy and its ending leads directly into the very first book in the series begins. This is the one that fans have been waiting for, the book that shows Reacher's initial estrangement from the military and the beginning of his life as a mysterious nomad.

For an installment with such significance attached to it, The Affair is a surprisingly typical Reacher novel. Unlike in The Enemy, Reacher is on his own for most of the book like he is in the rest of the series, and the basic plot could have been easily transposed to his post-military days. The ingredients that we expect to see--strange murder, weird little town, thuggish locals, flavor-of-the-month local love interest--are all present, and despite a neat in media res opening and the saga-begins ending, everything goes down pretty much exactly the way you'd expect.

Several years after the events of The Enemy, Jack Reacher is called in to investigate a sensitive matter: a woman has been brutally murdered in a town bordering an Army base in Mississippi. The base and its soldiers are crucial pieces in a secret military conflict (Kosovo), and the Army can't afford to have the cover blown by an investigation. Reacher will pose as a homeless ex-Army drifter (!) and attempt to uncover the killer. If it's a civilian, that is. Naturally, things get complicated fast and the bodies begin to stack up, and Reacher, never one to follow orders, sets out to topple the massive conspiracy that someone has set in place. Even if it costs him his career, or his life.

So, yeah. Business as usual for our boy Jack.

As always, Child has written a real page-turner and the book is solidly constructed, despite a premise that borders on flimsy. The opening couple of chapters do a good job of establishing suspense and the way they meet up with the narrative halfway through is cool. As usual, the pace is actually fairly slow, ratcheting up the tension to nearly unbearable heights by the end. There's not much that's shocking or particularly original about the conclusion to the mystery, but Child is always good at obscuring the obvious truth until the very end.

The Love Interest Subplot is a tiresome and expected element of nearly every Reacher novel. I've gotten heartily sick of Reacher always running into some runway-ready cop or lawyer. The relationship only ever lasts a single book, so there's no lasting effect on Reacher. I will admit that The Affair's love interest, former MP and sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux, is a likable character and a good match for Reacher. The relationship is well-written and engaging enough, yet the fact that we know it goes nowhere makes it feel like irrelevant filler. I started to get excited when, mid-book, we began to get hints that Elizabeth was the serial killer Reacher was tracking. Having the love interest be the villain would be a series first (at least for the books I've read so far) and would be a very interesting end to the book. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a cleverly planted misdirection, and the actual killer is a lot less unusual. Reacher and Elizabeth part ways at the end, and that's that.

Although the small town is a common Child setting, he still does a good job of painting the world of Carter Crossing. It's a tired, dusty little place that depends entirely on the military base to sustain its fragile economy. Even though its an isolated small town, it still has a wealthy part of town (predominantly white), and a poor part of town (predominantly black). The quiet way that Child deals with the racial issues simmering underneath the town is a good example of just how effortlessly he nails the weird little corners of America that the series inhabits. I can't help but wish his approach towards the military was as subtle. I don't think his portrayal of the Army is one of the strong points of The Affair. He paints the Army as a vast, secretive, vaguely nefarious organization run by a bunch of trigger-happy assholes who don't hesitate to either commit or cover up crimes. While I don't think this is an accurate picture of the real-life military, I would be willing to accept a negative portrayal if it was more skillfully or convincingly written.

Furthermore, I think that the extent of Reacher's cynicism and disillusionment with the Army is too far along by the time The Affair begins. The novel should have shown how Reacher's faith in the military was betrayed, how he discovered that the organization he had spent his entire life serving was not the place for him. Some of that comes through, but Reacher's forced resignation at the end feels inevitable and lacks the emotional punch it should have, considering its importance in the series overall.

Better are the little touches of origin story mythmaking that are laced throughout the book: Reacher discovering the joys of public transportation, setting up a Western Union account, buying a folding toothbrush. These moments are pure undiluted awesome. The Affair could perhaps use a bit more of this at times, but it's an overall solid outing--satisfying, absorbing and as well paced as always. No thriller author I've ever read keeps the pages turning as reliably as Child, even when he's not in top form. The Affair is not a top-notch Reacher adventure (not quite twisty or exciting enough), but it's fairly satisfying both as a prequel to the main series and as a thriller in its own right.

NEXT UP: Dan Simmons's Hyperion.

One Was a Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming

One Was a Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming, 2011

The brunette braced her hands on her thighs. "My name's Mary McNabb, but everyone calls me Tally." She looked at Stillman. "Sorta like you, I guess. I was formerly a specialist, formerly in the United States Army."

"Where did you serve, Tally?"

"Camp Anaconda."

That got some whistles from the rest. "Mortaritaville," Fergusson said.

"Yeah, well." McNabb ran her hands through her short hair.

Stillman snapped his fingers. "Mary McNabb. Fractured left ankle. A car dropped on you?"

McNabb laughed. "I was helping my husband fix it up for resale. I'm impressed you remember."

Sarah put up her hands again. "Wait." She looked around the circle. "Do you all know each other?"

They looked at each other. They looked at her. "Yes," they all said.

"It's a very small town." Clare Fergusson's voice was dry. ---(page 6)

Julia Spencer-Fleming has gotten enormously good at the formula of her novels. I'm not saying they're formulaic (because they really aren't), but that she has, over the course of the last few books in the series, found a perfect balance between mystery, romance, thriller and drama.

One Was a Soldier, the latest in her continuing Millers Kill saga, is another rock-solid novel, darker and more intricate than I Shall Not Want, heavy on character interaction and light on action. As always the pacing is pretty much flawless, the dialogue is sharp and the characters continually display fresh layers.

After a year and a half in Iraq flying helicopters, Clare returns to Russ and Millers Kill pretending not to be suffering from harrowing flashbacks and an increasing dependence on sleeping pills. Clare joins a local veterans support group, hoping to heal herself before her post-traumatic stress disorder interferes with her relationship with Russ, but finds herself set against the man she loves when one of the group dies under mysterious circumstances. Russ rules the death a suicide, while Clare is convinced that it was murder, and only a small part of a dangerous conspiracy.

The mystery plot is not the main event here; it's more of an interesting sidebar to accompany the larger story of the returning veterans and their struggles to reintegrate into the world of Millers Kill. Spencer-Fleming introduces a few new characters and fleshes out some existing ones, too, like Eric McCrea and Trip Stillman. Like most of Spencer-Fleming's writing choices, it's a smart move to give some of the supporting characters some room to shine. She clearly knows that readers would get bored if it all they got was Russ/Clare interaction.

The Russ/Clare interaction is pretty darn good, though. By now, Spencer-Fleming knows exactly how to portray their relationship, which goes through some interesting permutations in this volume. Clare in particular goes down a compelling, and surprisingly dark, path. It's a testament to Spencer-Fleming's control of her characters and narrative that she can make unorthodox choices seem logical and in-character.

The series' other major character pairing, Hadley/Kevin, doesn't get quite as much attention as it did in I Shall Not Want (the veterans group story takes up too much space), but there's enough development to be satisfying. Kevin Flynn continues to be Spencer-Fleming's ace in the hole, and many of the book's best moments, both comic and romantic, come from his naivete and kind nature.

As always, Spencer-Fleming experiments with a slightly different style (she's also used flashbacks, real-time and in media res). Here, the narrative is jumbled and somewhat nonlinear, as well as wider in scope than some of the previous books, involving more characters than the core cast and a larger plot.

Spencer-Fleming is very good at keeping her mystery plots both varied and plausible, and Soldier has an excellent one. There is a touch of that mid-book sagging that so many mysteries have, but I really liked the fact that the mystery served the emotional drama rather than the other way around. Small doses of action throughout make up for the lack of a wild and crazy showdown at the end. Also: setting up a potential Big Bad for the series in John Opperman? Inspired, and a terrific use of the already-established continuity.

One Was a Soldier definitely doesn't have the emotional train-crash/instant classic aspects of All Mortal Flesh and its plot is not the best of the series, but it still easily stands as one of the series' strongest novels. Spencer-Fleming's writing is as clear and strong as ever and her sense of character has never been better. A final-sentence twist (admittedly, a fairly predictable one) sets up the next book with aplomb. This is one series that shows no signs of flagging quality, even seven books in.

NEXT UP: Due to my full re-read of the Harry Potter series, I haven't updated this blog for a while. Never fear! I'm currently working on a couple of books, including A Feast for Crows and Anne Perry's The Face of a Stranger.

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child, 2007

The boxer Muhammad Ali's reach was reckoned to be about forty inches and his hands were once timed at an average eighty miles an hour as they moved through it. Reacher was no Ali. Not even close. Especially not on his weaker side. His left hand moved at about sixty miles an hour, maximum. That was all. But sixty miles an hour was the same thing as a mile a minute, which was about the same thing as eighty-eight feet per second. Which meant that Reacher's left hand took a little less than thirty-thousandths of a second to cross the counter. And halfway through its travel it bunched into a fist.

And thirty-thousandths of a second was way too brief an interval for the guy to pull the Python's trigger. Any revolver is a complex mechanical system and one as big as the Python is heavier in its action than most. Not very susceptible to accidental discharge. The guy's finger didn't even tighten. He took Reacher's fist in his face before his brain had even registered that it was moving. Reacher was a lot slower than Muhammad Ali, but his arms were a lot longer. Which meant that the guy's head kept on accelerating. It kept on accelerating through a whole extra foot and a half before Reacher's arm was fully extended. And then the guy's head kept on accelerating. It kept on accelerating right until it crashed against the wall behind the counter and shattered the glass over the gun dealer's license.

At that point it stopped accelerating and started a slow downward slide to the floor. ---(pages 289-290, UK edition)

Let's face it: when it comes to pure, kinetic, kick-ass thriller reading pleasure, no one beats Lee Child. The Jack Reacher series is pure fun and even though I love the classic formula, I also like it when Child gives it a little twist.

Bad Luck and Trouble changes things up by making lone-wolf Reacher part of a team. Everyone loves Reacher as a one-man military, but it's refreshing to change the dynamic a bit and it adds an unexpected--and amusing--bit of depth to Reacher's character.

As the book begins, Reacher is in Portland, Oregon, when he is contacted by Frances Neagley, a member of a special military police task force that he once headed (soon after the events of The Enemy, in fact). It seems that a member of the old team has been found dead and Neagley is calling in the cavalry in an attempt to find the perpetrators to justice. Together, the remaining team members go to war with a mysterious, powerful enemy, only to find themselves battling against a shocking and lethal terrorist plot.

Most Child novels have peripheral characters who help Reacher on his quest, but there's never been so much emphasis on them. It's extremely amusing to see Reacher operating as the leader of a team, and the way that that changes his usual strategy. Even better is the subtle comparison of Reacher's drifter lifestyle and his friends' prosperous, structured lives. Is Reacher embarrassed? Jealous? A bit of both? Child never quite tells us, but it's fantastic to see the man of steel express a few new emotions.

The plot is fairly standard for a Jack Reacher adventure: not completely ingenious, but lively and with several nice twists. There aren't any of the jaw-dropping shocks that punctuate the very best Child novels and the villains are boring compared to Gone Tomorrow's Lila Hoth or One Shot's The Zec.

To make up for it, we get fun character interaction and snappy dialogue between the special investigators. The non-Reacher investigators do lack some depth, but they're likable and well drawn, and since there's some sexual tension between Reacher and petite brunette Karla Dixon, we get to skip Reacher's obligatory love interest. That device has certainly worn very thin over the course of the series.

Perhaps most importantly, we get the incredible action scenes and the explosive climax we've come to expect from Jack Reacher. No one--and I mean no one--can grab you during those last fifty pages like Lee Child can. In this installment, we get a particularly delightful, multi-layered orgy of violence and Reacher-induced mayhem. The final confrontation with the Big Bad is a sadistic delight (are those two things mutually exclusive?).

Bad Luck and Trouble is not a work of great literature by any means--although we do need more great works of literature where cars are driven through glass walls--but it is a work of great thriller writing, like all of the Jack Reacher books are, a masterpiece of suspense and action, as well as being just about as much fun as you're likely to have reading. This is one series that just never stops giving pleasure.

NEXT UP: Strip Jack by Ian Rankin.

The Enemy by Lee Child

The Enemy by Lee Child, 2004

Lee Child's Jack Reacher series is really a very odd one when you stop and think about it. There are no recurring locations and precious few recurring characters. The series focuses like a laser on one thing only, and that thing is Jack Reacher. To an extent, the entire series is a lengthy character study on the subject of Reacher, who, luckily, is an endlessly fascinating subject.

The Enemy is the first novel in the series to take place entirely in Jack Reacher's past as a military police officer. My all-time favorite Child novel, Persuader, featured an excellent and lengthy flashback to this same time period. For series fans, it's a wonderful opportunity for some insight into everyone's favorite badass drifter, as well as being yet another kinetic thriller/mystery story.

The book begins very early in the morning on New Year's Day, 1990. Jack Reacher has just been mysteriously assigned to a position on a sleepy North Carolina base when a two-star general turns up dead in a local motel. The general appears to have been meeting a prostitute and an all-important briefcase he was carrying appears to be missing. Reacher being Reacher, he digs deeper and uncovers a deadly conspiracy that travels both up and down the ranks of the US Army.

If Child has a fault when it comes to his plots, it's that there's a certain sameness to them. The Enemy, thanks to its status as a prequel, is able to shake up the typical Reacher formula. It's a combination of military thriller and classic whodunit, less reliant on action than the usual Lee Child adventure.

This is both good and bad. It's good because it's nice to see a Reacher novel with a somewhat slower pace and bad because the plot as a whole suffers a bit from the reduced speed. The book's middle sags a bit under the weight of too many clues and too much information, but Child characteristically turns things around for the ending, delivering one of his trademark knock-out climaxes (think two things: "tanks" and "execution").

Child is still an underrated master of mystery and he puts together a very complicated plot in a pretty logical way, but I still had three-quarters of the ultimate solution figured out a long time before the unraveling. There's nothing here to match The Hard Way's multiple jawdroppers.

The Enemy's appeal mostly lies in the unusual setting and plot and its status as Jack Reacher's "origin story." In an atypical move, Child includes a subplot about Reacher's dying mother, an unabashedly emotional moment for our stalwart man of steel. These scenes are well-served by Child's terse prose, but I think the subplot could have been worked more gracefully into the main story.

Reacher's relationship with fellow MP Summer is also a little awkwardly handled. Reacher almost always has a disposable female companion and it's getting a little overdone. Summer is a likable character whon serves her function well, but we know that she's never going to show up again and that cheapens her romance with Reacher.

At least Child is still on top of his game, writing-wise. There are few authors who can evoke so much with so little. His action scenes are fantastic, but that's not all he can do:

What is the twentieth century's signature sound? You could have a debate about it. Some might say the slow drone of an aero engine. Maybe from a lone fighter crawling across an azure 1940s sky. Or the scream of a fast jet passing low overhead, shaking the ground. Or the whup whup whup of a helicopter. Or the roar of a laden 747 lifting off. Or the crump of bombs falling on a city. All of those would qualify. They're all uniquely twentieth-century noises. They were never heard before. Never, in all of history. Some crazy optimists might lobby for a Beatles song. A yeah, yeah, yeah chorus fading under the screams of their audience. I would have sympathy for that choice. But a song and screaming could never qualify. Music and desire have been around since the dawn of time. They weren't invented after 1900.

No, the twentieth century's signature sound is the squeal and clatter of tank tracks on a paved street. that sound was heard in Warsaw, and Rotterdam, and Stalingrad, and Berlin. Then it was heard again in Budapest and Prague, and Seoul and Saigon. It's a brutal sound. It's the sound of fear. It speaks of a massive overwhelming advantage in power. And it speaks of remote, impersonal indifference. Tank treads squeal and clatter and the very noise they make tell you they can't be stopped. It tells you you're weak and powerless against the machine. Then one track stops and the others keep on going and the tank wheels around and lurches straight toward you, roaring and squealing. That's the real twentieth-century sound. --- (pages 316-317)

Like all of Lee Child's works, The Enemy is a well-written joy to read. He writes thrillers better than just about anyone and his sharp dialogue and minimal description are as stylistically distinctive as Elmore Leonard's stream-of-consciousness prose.

It's a bit of a shame that The Enemy doesn't have a little more impact considering its unique status as the series' prequel volume. The plot is just a bit laborious and the Reacher family subplot seems like a big missed opportunity. As it is, it's an entertaining footnote in the Reacher series, but unlikely to make my Top Five list any time soon.

UP NEXT: Kim Newman's horror/fantasy/alternate history/thriller Anno Dracula.