Jack Reacher's early days

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

The Enemy, Lee Child's new thriller featuring loner Jack Reacher, is something of a prequel to the well-received series. It takes the reader back to 1990, at which point Reacher is serving his country as a major in the military police. With the Soviet Union on the verge of collapse and the Berlin Wall coming down stone by stone, it is the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Reacher is summarily withdrawn from his duties in Panama and posted to Fort Bird, North Carolina, just in time to investigate the sordid murder of a two-star general in a no-tell motel. In short order he discovers that the general's wife has been bludgeoned to death; a third murder on the Fort Bird grounds gives every indication of being connected as well. This time, Reacher is not only the investigator, but also a possible suspect. Unlike previous Reacher novels (Echo Burning, Persuader), The Enemy focuses sharply on character, although certainly not at the expense of a superb plot; it reads much more like a police procedural than the thrillers for which Lee Child is known. The compelling backstory gives us glimpses of Reacher's army-brat childhood, and of his ailing mother who jealously guards her secret past. The Enemy will prove an excellent introduction to the series for newcomers, and will provide exceptional insight for longtime readers into a truly original character in contemporary suspense fiction.


Murder in Minnesota

Readers were introduced to St. Paul homicide detective Paris Murphy in last year's Clean Cut, the debut novel by veteran Twin Cities reporter Theresa Monsour. This month, the gifted Irish-Lebanese Murphy returns in the diabolical Cold Blood, a tale of a tortured serial killer's revenge. Justice Trip was a nerd throughout high school; in fact, nerdhood would have been a step up for the hapless youth. When his tormentors were killed in a fluke car accident in their senior year, nobody suspected that Trip could have had anything to do with it. Now, a decade and a half later, Justice Trip is on television, having turned up a major clue in the disappearance of a well-liked local girl. Murphy does a double take as she watches the news story; she went to high school with this guy. In fact, she turned him down when he asked her to the prom. As Murphy investigates the crime, she becomes convinced that Justice Trip is responsible for the murder, and perhaps several other unsolved killings in the northern Midwest. But can she find the proof? With cliff-hanger suspense, Monsour takes the reader first into the mind of the killer, then into the deliberate police work that will (with any luck) bring him to justice. No sign of a sophomore slump in this topnotch second installment of what we hope will be a long and successful series.


Mystery of the month

What are the odds of two May mysteries being set in Minnesota? Have the Twin Cities become crime central while nobody was watching? Whatever the case, some first-rate thrillers have been set in the Gopher State (I'm not making that name up), most recently this month's Tip of the Ice Pick award-winner, P.J. Tracy's Live Bait. Mother-daughter writing team P.J. and Traci Lambrecht have crafted a fine successor to their best-selling 2003 novel Monkeewrench. Homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth return to investigate a series of murders of octogenarians, several of whom are Holocaust survivors. Events take a global turn as the murder weapon is determined to have been involved in several homicides worldwide; meanwhile ex-Monkeewrench computer geeks use high-tech face recognition software to ferret out information not only about the killer(s?), but also the victims. The tension in the Twin Cities is palpable as elderly residents arm themselves against the unknown predator, and it falls to Magozzi and Rolseth to bring the case to a speedy conclusion before there is a senior citizen uprising. Live Bait is a book to be read in one sitting—it's that suspenseful. The characters are complex and thoughtfully drawn, the dialogue razor-sharp, and the resolution masterful. Don't miss it!


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