Lee Child had been searching for a way to kill off his titular character Jack Reacher – famously played by Tom Cruise – for years.
“For years I thought about different ways of killing Reacher off. First of all, I thought he would go out in a blaze of bullets, something like the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It would take an army to bring him down [but] Reacher had to have an afterlife after I was done,” Lee said to The Times.
And then he found his answer: his brother, Andrew Grant.
A talented writer, Andrew is taking on the mantel of penning Jack Reacher while Lee enjoys a retirement of sorts – he’s also just brought out a collection of short stories.
Woman’s Day catches up with the British writer to discuss life without his eponymous character and what’s next for him…
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You’ve just released a collection of short stories, written over the past three decades. Why now?
It’s refreshing to be able to do something different. It’s a lot of fun to be another person – be a bad person, be an incompetent person, a nerd or a geek
or a historical figure. I found it really liberating, especially because I didn’t think anybody was reading them. Reacher has never been a burden, but that is my living, my job. And to step outside of it was exciting.
How is the process different?
Writers hate to waste anything. So if you have an idea that’s not big enough for a novel, you don’t waste it. You put it in the back of your mind. Then somebody asks for a short story and you think yeah, why not?
Tom Cruise was Reacher in two movies and the franchise is now an Amazon Prime series starring Alan Ritchson. Who represents your hero the best?
Tom was brilliant at the internal stuff but physically he was not convincing. Part of Reacher’s life is he’s huge. With Alan we’ve finally got the physical part as well. I think we got absolutely the right guy and he’s been terrific.
In 2020 you announced your retirement and that your author brother Andrew would take over writing the Reacher books – how did that come about?
I came up with the idea and I thought he’d be flattered by the offer, but decided not to do it because he’s very proud, very independent and very stubborn! And he was doing great stuff of his own. But he said yes. He’s known Reacher since day one and was the first person who ever read the first manuscript.
Why did you feel you needed to stop?
I love Reacher, as a reader myself, I’ve felt very betrayed and annoyed when authors get lazy, or run out of energy. So I made myself a promise I would never do that – my readers deserve the best. And I was getting old and tired. I was running out of energy! So I thought the honest thing to do is just to live up to that old promise. I have an old fashioned attitude that the whole point of life is retiring. At some point you say, all right, I’ve done my work, now I’m going to be retired. And it’s really [been] a life-long dream of mine and I’m really happy. My ideal day is to read a book, which I’m so grateful for now because finally I can now I’m not writing all day. I’m happy to be a consumer – I’m fantastically lazy!
But do new ideas for books still pop into your head?
I had this idea for a book called Twenty, which would be about the twentieth person born after some tremendous population collapse, where the infrastructure was still visible around them but dilapidated and nobody knew what it was for or how to survive. As I’m getting older, you look back on your life and I had [another] idea about a guy who was in a car crash that looks fatal but he actually wakes up again aged four and he has to live his whole life again. The temptation to gamble would be irresistible [but] how do you gamble when you’re five? So I’ve got loads of ideas but I’ll probably never do anything with them. I’ll probably just sit back and read!
SAFE ENOUGH by Lee Child (BIG W, $18)
