Even though he’s a man for our troubled times, Reacher is a timeless hero of legend. Reacher is Achilles, Samson, Cu’Cullaihnn. In Child’s words, he is that eternal wanderer
Child’s prose is famously “frictionless”. You don’t need to follow the impossible plots... Lee ingeniously writes “the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast”. Mostly this means the violent stuff...
And Reacher is – of course – about rough justice. Even monkeys hate injustice.
Above all, Reacher is about suppressed rage on a mass societal level. As these books are beloved by women more than anyone (upwards of 60% of his astronomically large readership is female)...it is now exceedingly clear to me that they are very much about suppressed female rage. Source
Scatter chart. Horizontal axis is the year the book was published and the vertical axis is the rating (low numbers good)
Top 5
#1 Bad Luck and Trouble (2007)#2 Tripwire (1999)
#3 Never Go Back (2013)
#4 Second Son (2011) – short story
#5 Killing Floor (1997)
ERJ notes: the recent TV series is vastly superior to the movie. Reacher works when the hero is big enough to have his own gravitational field because raw, physical power is core to who he is and the hole he tears in the time-space continuum. It seems like a gimmick when Reacher is played by a little dude like Tom Cruise.
Hat-tip to Lucas
Very insightful. I enjoyed the Cruise movies not having read the books. I enjoy the Prime series more.
ReplyDeleteI have never read a Jack Reacher novel nor seen any programming. Recommended?
ReplyDeleteMaybe.
DeleteIf you like Karma and FAFO then Reacher delivers M1 Abrams level doses.
I'll second the recommendation. I've read at least 15 of the Reacher novels.
DeleteHeck yeah!
DeleteBecause I loved Vince Flynn, a book store recommended Lee Child. I've read all but the latest 2 or 3 and highly recommend them. It doesn't really matter but I read them in the order they were published. Tom Cruise is an excellent actor but he's physically not Jack Reacher. Alan Ritchson is much closer to what I picture is my mind's eye. Thank you ERJ. I enjoy and look forward to your stories.
ReplyDeleteIt seems there is no consensus on what is best. If you Google for the best ones the opinions are scattered. I read a 1/4 of them and liked Bad Luck and Trouble. 61 hours has a fiery ending made for Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteBad
Bad luck
Years ago, my mother in law handed me a paperback book of Lee Childs and his Reacher series. I was imminently hooked! I was an MP in the Army(enlisted) and a fairly large man with a acute sense of right and wrong. I have read all his books and short stories. This is a book character I can relate too. I have even wandered the states, albeit, with a truck and a small travel trailer for many years. I just enjoyed my own potty and my own pillow...
ReplyDeleteI was an Air Force SP during the Cold War, and got to spend three months TDY with an MP company at Ft. Lewis, so I enjoy the military police aspects of it. (I'm not large and I'm a mediocre brawler, so identifying with Reacher is more wishful thinking in my case.)
DeleteI have a truck and small travel trailer for the same reasons you did, so I completely understand that.
They are fun reads but completely unrealistic and the author clearly knows nothing about firearms. In one book, reacher rushes a guy holding a pistol in him because he knew it wouldn't fire because it had been left loaded for years and the magazine spring was weak.
ReplyDeleteI noticed a lot of that type of thing, too. I just rolled my eyes and kept going.
DeleteYeah, well, the author is British. It is tough for him to perform first-hand research.
DeleteBad Luck and Trouble (2007) The source material for 2nd tv series
ReplyDeleteKilling Floor (1997) The source material for 1st tv series
The tv series plays loose with the novels. I haven't seen the shows but have seen some clips.
I saw the movies before encountering the books. The movie Reacher may not be the same person as the book one, but a great character nonetheless and the movies are good, if not authentic.
ReplyDeleteThe mick herron spy series is as good or better than reacher.
ReplyDeleteI've read them all. It's a bit of escapism. If you suspend your disbelief (he's an Englishman of a 'certain type' so the firearms knowledge isn't just non-existent, it's often hilarious, and if you're a fighter/martial-artist the fight scenes are almost as bad.Throw in the, by now obligatory in every book/movie/TV show, "strong woman" kicking arse, too which is always worth a giggle) they are quite entertaining.
ReplyDelete