New Zealand is, as Lee Child says, “the world capital of Reacher madness”. Per capita we buy more Jack Reacher novels than anywhere else.
As Child said in one TV interview, New Zealanders probably like his giant vigilante hero because he’s a bit like the archetypal Kiwi: “quiet, undemonstrative, not showy, not a big-head … he quietly does the right thing where he can”.
As his 30th Reacher novel rolls off the printing presses, now co-written (to not universal approval) with his brother Andrew, out comes a new book that looks behind the scenes. Reacher is a collection of Child’s short forewords to a series of limited editions of his novels. Rather than a half-pretend explanation of the provenance of each story, he decided to set down a “plain and quotidian record of the who, why, what, where and when”. Like the novels, the essays are engaging, considered and insightful.
Whether you’ve read all of the novels or, like me, just a handful, you’ll probably know some of the author’s backstory. Born James Grant, Child grew up in Birmingham, and when in the mid-1990s he was made redundant from his studio director’s job at Granada Television, he decided to write a novel about a 2m-tall American ex-military police loner. He was weeks away from not being able to pay his mortgage when a two-book offer was made.
Child’s writing strategy is a don’t-try-this-at-home one: “I work with no plan, no theory, no structured approach, and no overarching intentions.” His basic technique is to start in the middle of things. “Simply ask or imply a question at the beginning of the story and then don’t answer it for a long, long time.”
It’s done in two-finger style, the writing always starting on September 1 each year, often using ideas and dialogue taken from his life: “C’mon guys, this is a clean shirt.” He’s a scholar of the form: thrillers need obstacles, and finding them for Reacher was hard, as he faces few physical perils, and other threats like blackmail don’t work, as he wants to be homeless.
Not surprisingly, there was a lot of guesswork, luck and youthful chutzpah in the writing and publishing of the early books. As his success grows, Child writes about moving to America, how he could eventually afford to have a New York office with a library, two coffee machines and an Eames chair and ottoman, “for lying back and staring into space, an essential but much underappreciated-by-others part of any writer’s process”.
About how in time serving soldiers would get in touch as they felt close to the character. There are glimpses of the author. “I have a law degree; I’m very articulate; I’m a world-class pedant …” And more recently, a farmer: the Tom Cruise Reacher films paid for a country house in England.
Eventually, an academic asked Child if he could watch him write. He was dubious – “I think of writing as show business for shy people. I like to be left alone” – but knew what the guy wrote would reach markets Child couldn’t. The resultant book, Reacher Said Nothing, meant “highbrow papers and magazines started talking about the big guy, and they still are”.
The essays finish at 2020. What of the future? Eventually, Child will step aside for his brother. There’s been a Reacher story set in Sydney. It’s surely only fair, given the local love for the character, that his hero makes his way down to Godzone.
