The Affair (Jack Reacher #16) (original 2011; edition 2012)

Fans of Lee Child may have wondered why Jack Reacher, Child’s popular protagonist, left the army. (Even in the first book in the series, Reacher was already an ex-Army M.P.) Child answers that question in The Affair, by going back in time to 1997 for the termination of Reacher’s military career, when Reacher was 36.

Most of the action takes place near Fort Kelham, a fictional army ranger base in Northern Mississippi, where Reacher has been sent to make sure the army is not implicated in the murder of a beautiful young townie. The young lady in question, who happened to be Caucasion, was the victim of a grizzly throat slashing, just the sort of killing a well-trained army ranger might be able to accomplish. It then transpires that two other local beautiful women were recently killed in an identical modus operandi, but being black, their murders caused hardly a ripple.

While in Mississippi, Reacher encounters some tough [but not nearly as tough as Reacher] Good Ol’ Boys, a beautiful ex-marine sheriff named Elizabeth Deveraux, and a sinister plot that extends high into the Pentagon. As one who has read Lee Child novels can expect, Reacher goes on to beat up the Good Ol’ Boys (six of them at one time), make passionate love to the ex-marine, and foil the sinister plot. In the process, the reader learns the extent of damage that (1) a freight train can do to a car; (2) a hunting knife can do to a throat; and (3) a well-timed head-butt can do to an unexpecting combatant.

Child is an expert at describing macho wise-cracking, verbal intimidation, and hand-to-hand combat. He is awful at describing sex. Unlike most of his books, this one contains several sex scenes, none of which is erotic, all of which could have been truncated. During the first and most explicit sex scene, I kept wondering and asking myself, “When is he going to finish?!” That scene was probably more painful because I was listening to an audio book and could not easily skip to the dénouement.

The reader of the audio version, Dick Hill, does a decent job of changing voices for the male characters; but when he indicates that a female is speaking, it is just painful. I’d have trouble being attracted to any woman who sounded like him even if she were gorgeous and intelligent.

Nevertheless, when he sticks to his knitting, Child can be very good, and this book is no exception. Child knows how to withhold just enough information from the reader to keep one off balance without being too gimmicky. The plot is nicely complicated, and the action outside the bedroom is fast-paced and handled with aplomb. Child uses repetition of verbal themes very effectively. For example, when Reacher says, “I said nothing,” you can almost hear ominous theme music playing in the background.

Evaluation: This isn’t the best Jack Reacher novel I’ve read, but it is not bad. Recommended for airport reading.

Note: This is the 16th book in the Jack Reacher series. I listened to the unabridged audio version on 11 compact discs.

(JAB) ( )

This is the second Jack Reacher book I've read and I enjoyed it better than the first ("Killing Floor"). The story was tight, the dialogue well done and witty, and the characters were nicely fleshed out.

"The Affair" is about a murder that's occurred outside a high security army base in rural Mississippi. An MP is sent to the base to investigate in case the culprit is a solider, but Jack Reacher, an MP himself, is sent to oversee the police investigation as well (since the murder didn't actually occur on base). Little does he know that the local sheriff was a former Marine MP, so she recognizes what she's dealing with in Reacher. This is a well-written who-done-it that keeps you guessing until the end.

My only real complaint was the violence Reacher commits during the investigation. He took steps that seemed unnecessary and others seemed ok with it. This didn't seem plausible, but I think the story was good enough to allow me to give Child a pass on this. ( )

This one was just okay.

It's the long ballyhooed story that explains why Reacher left the Army. Reacher is dispatched to Mississippi to investigate a murder, with the understanding that what he finds out may be so sensitive that the Army may want to keep a lid on it. What seems like a single murder becomes a case of serial killing. Adding to the confusion are cover-ups which lead to other killings.

Novels about serial killers often rely on salacious examinations of the abnormal psychology of the perpetrator. That's not a bad thing. In fact, it's probably the sine qua non of a good novel of that type. But here we get never get up close and personal with the killer. We see the end results of what the murderer has done, but unlike most Reacher novels, we never stand in the presence of the evil in such a way that when Reacher comes down on the perps in typical Biblical fashion, we feel that it's warranted. The killers and conspirators seem hapless rather than diabolical, so when Reacher finally murders them in cold blood (yes, not even in self-defense, in some cases), we end up directing our opprobrium toward Reacher himself, and not his victims. And that's not why you read a Reacher book. For Reacher's over-the-top brand of violence to work, you need to feel that the bad guy is a monster that needs killing. ( )

I finally finished this, minutes before it disappeared from my Kindle when the checkout ended at midnight. It helped that this was one of the more unevenly paced Reachers, and we don't return to the opening scene and timeline until about 2/3 of the way through--only at which point are we aware of how much deep shit Reacher is in this time and how hard it'll be to get out, so those last 20 or so chapters were easy to ride along with and finish the book in time.

Get out he does, of course (not just because he's Reacher, but because The Affair is set in time just before Reacher #1 and thus nearly every other book in the series), thanks to a disappointingly arbitrary deus (or rather colleague) ex machina.. But the buildup is slow and lacks convincing tension. I think just this once we're supposed to see that Jack Reacher's passion for the woman is genuine (and reciprocated), and understand that that's part of the conflict he's feeling. But no, it didn't work that way for me, in part because I don't recall her ever turning up in any of the 14 other storylines that are supposed to take place afterwards.

Child sets this one in a distinct time and place, which gives him an opportunity to show off some locally and temporally appropriate language and cultural knowledge. But it's often too conspicuously displayed, and occasionally not quite right after all.

Still, it's a Reacher. The man's flawed infallibility is his great attraction, and the books are the same. ( )

i like the reacher novels and this is another retro. interesting to see him try to be who he is now as the bricks start piling up. (in hindsight anyway). kept you guessing a bit. you'll like it if you're a reacher fan.