Similarities between Reacher and Lee Child Then make him ex-military police because, broadly speaking, these would be crime novels, and he had to have some investigative experience, and he had to understand procedures and forensics and so on. So that was an easy choice: Make him ex-military. I thought, 'Well, he won't be working, and he won't live anywhere, and let's just take it from there.'" Child also felt that this origin would lend itself to the character's personality and nomadic lifestyle: "This idea of the rootless alienation has got to come from somewhere, and I noticed that the most alienated people are always ex-military, because it's like going from one solar system to the other, it's so different. Everybody else had their guy working: a private eye in Boston or a police lieutenant in L.A., or wherever. Child has explained, "I thought that I would do a book that's not the same as everybody else's. Reacher's ex-military background was a specific and tactical choice on his behalf. On seeing this, Child's wife commented that if his writing career did not work out he could "always get a job as a reacher in a supermarket". The character's name first came to Child in a supermarket when an old lady, noting the span of Child's arms, asked for his help in reaching out to a can of pears. His name is short and commonplace, as opposed to quirky or unusual Reacher's personal ethics and wandering lifestyle are reminiscent of the chivalrous knight errant of medieval lore as opposed to an anti-hero tormented by addiction and haunted by past misbehavior.
Similarly, editor Otto Penzler published an essay by Child explaining that Jack Reacher was created deliberately in contrast to the prevailing trends in crime fiction. Bob Cornwell quotes Lee Child's reply in another interview as having created Reacher "as an antidote, to all the depressed and miserable alcoholics that increasingly peopled the genre". It had to keep a roof over our heads, so it was totally, totally 110% commercially motivated." Ĭritics have perceived other influences in Jack Reacher's creation. According to Child, authorship was a purely pragmatic decision: "I wasn't one of these people that felt compelled to write. 1.2 Author's commentary and interpretationĭevelopment and author's commentary Development Īt the time Lee Child sat down to write his first novel Killing Floor, he was unemployed, having been made redundant from his position as a presentation director for Granada Television.1.1.1 Similarities between Reacher and Lee Child.
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