A Book Review: The Affair by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #16)

Lee Child has sold more than 100 million Jack Reacher novels, so this series requires little introduction. However, I have a tag line for promoting these books and I think it is very good. Here it is:

If you don't know Reacher, then you don't know Jack.

For the full effect, read out this line with the dramatic voice from Hollywood movie trailers.

Ha ha, very funny, Daniel.

On a more serious note, as a fan of these books, I have always wondered how Jack Reacher came to be the way he is. That is, a vagrant wandering from town to town and dispensing justice. At the beginning of Killing Floor, we were told in a few sentences, Reacher lost his job as MP, but it also teased at a bigger story, an untold story. If we don't have Reacher's origin story, then it is true that we don't know Jack. See?

In The Affair, the 16^th installment in the series, Lee Child finally gave us an origin story for Reacher, and this novel is splendid!

Synopsis:

The year was 1997. In Carter Crossing, Mississippi, someone cut a young woman's throat and dumped her body behind a bar. It was down the road from a big military base. Who killed the girl? Was it some local creep or an army guy?

Pentagon sent Major Jack Reacher of the military police to the site. He was supposed to be an undercover. Jack arrived at the once peaceful, little town, and encountered the local sheriff, who was a beautiful woman and a former marine. The more Jack investigated the case, the more dirt and secrets got blown wide open. Someone was hiding something, was it the Pentagon or the beautiful sheriff? What was the truth behind the affair?

My thoughts on this book:

The Affair is sitting on my list of favorite Jack Reacher books alongside Killing Floor and Gone Tomorrow. This book is damn good.

This book, fast-paced and suspenseful, sated my curiosity about Reacher's former life in the military police. It is the untold story about Reacher that deserves to be told. Twists and turns accompanied this story from its beginning until the very end, I never knew what to expect of the book. Just as I thought the plot was going one way, Lee Child would throw in another object or person in suspicion, that could lead to a plot 180. Meanwhile, Reacher was being true to his character; a hardass who never backs away from the truth, no matter the cost. This is a quality that made Jack Reacher such a likable character.

Lee Child wrote The Affair with his signature style – hard boiled, punchy, and to the point. His descriptions for the Southern US town, vivid, detailed, yet efficient, laid down the ground floor for a thrilling ride. From page one, The Affair jumped straight into its story at 120 miles per hour, and it stayed at 120 miles per hour until the very last page. I did not experience a moment of bore in this book. I also wish to mention, The Affair was narrated in the first person. That is, Jack Reacher was narrating the story. Some books utilize a third person narration to give readers an overall view of multiple characters. In The Affair, however, the first person narrative works the best for a thriller of this type. It takes us straight into Jack's head, where we saw how the gears were turning inside his head for various situations, be it solving a crime, or methodically taking down multiple opponents in street fights.

I like The Affair. Every Jack Reacher novel is a stand alone story so you can start from anywhere. But The Affair is special because this book provides the missing piece in the Jack Reacher mythos that most readers are dying to know. So if you want to know how Jack became “Reacher”, then make sure to check out The Affair.