THE AFFAIR (Jack Reacher #16) (audiobook) by Lee Child

 


Published by Random House Audio in 2011.
Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 14 hours, 5 minutes.
Unabridged

Any fan of the Jack Reacher series knows that they are not written in chronological order. This one is set in Reacher's later years in the Army. He is a major and, as fans know, he is part of the military police. Chronologically, it is set directly before the events of The Killing Floor, the first Jack Reacher book that was published.

Jack Reacher has been sent to Mississippi as part of a two man team to investigate a murder of a young woman that took place outside of a military base. It is presumed that the murderer was a soldier on base, maybe even the captain of a team of Rangers that have been shuttling in and out of Kosovo on secret missions as part of the Balkan civil war that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia.

That is a problem because this captain is very connected politically. His father is a U.S. Senator that is on the committe that helps set the military budget. 

The author, Lee Child

Reacher is part of a two man team. The other guy has been officially sent to the base to solve the murder - everyone knows he is coming. Reacher has been ordered to assume the role of a drifter - an ex-military guy with no home who has come into town. His job is to keep an eye on the local police and see if they have made any progress on the case and to report it. He has been given multiple warnings that this will be a sensitive case and he should tread lightly. Reacher decides that solving the case would be a good thing, even if it is politically unpopular.

When Reacher discovers that it's not just one murder but three very similar murders of local girls he knows that he is in for much more than he bargained for...

If you have read a few books in this series, you know how they all go. Reacher comes to town, identifies a problem and starts working towards resolving it. Along the way he drinks gallons of coffee, eats in a diner, buys replacement clothing and meets an extremely talented female professional (Lee Child has no problem doling out the talent to women and men in equal measure in his stories) and does a lot of walking.

This was a solid Reacher story. Not the best, certainly not a bad one. A couple of the side stories had some real emotional resonance. The main story doesn't quite hold up to intense scrutiny so don't do that - enjoy the story and move on. 

Not all Reacher books do this, but this one has multiple sex scenes with a fetish thrown in. There were six scenes - I know this because Reacher keeps counting them as part of a series of observations about how the first time is special, the second time can be a better experience and so on. The whole thing got tiresome for me and one of them seemed even weirder since it happened right after an extremely sad and tragic event that had an element of their fetish worked in with it. It would have soured me from it, but I think Lee Child was on a roll of some sort and wanted to keep on going with it.

Dick Hill read the audiobook. Dick Hill is the reason that I quit reading the series as physical books. He is my favorite audiobook reader (sadly, now retired) and I just think that he had a feel for reading Reacher's dialogue. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Affair (Jack Reacher #16) by Lee Child.

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