Why have you chosen to tell what we might call Jack Reacher’s origin story in The Affair?
This is the second Reacher prequel. It fills the gap between the first one and the start of the series. Along with people enjoying the current-day stories, they’ve had two long-standing questions; What was he like in the army, which was answered in The Enemy. And the second, how and why did he leave the army, is answered in The Affair.
How did you come up with the Reacher character?
It was sort of a blind process. I felt that, to make a book work, you can’t over-think it, or tailor it for male or female readers. So I metaphorically closed my eyes and wrote about whatever came out. That was Reacher. Retrospectively, I look at the character as an update of a very old figure, who comes out of 1,000 years of literary tradition: the loner, the mysterious stranger, the knight errant who shows up, solves a problem and then leaves. He came out of Scandinavian sagas and English tales of knights and survived into the American West and pop lit.
What about the name?
The most difficult thing for me in writing is coming up with character names. Usually when I’m searching for a name I look around my office until I see the name of an author, or a brand of stationery, that works. I wrote the first book without a name in mind, I was completely stuck until my wife suggested that, after I lost my broadcasting job in Britain, that, with my size [Child is 6’5”] I could be a reacher in a supermarket. It was a gift from her to me.
You’ve spoken of the influence of John D. MacDonald on your work, but I see something of Richard Starks’s Parker in Reacher. Or the obverse of Parker. Both are big, dangerous men who wander the country and resent and resist authority. Of course, Parker is a criminal.
I know the Parker novels well but didn’t begin to read them until I’d started the Reacher series. And yes, obverse is correct, exactly the obverse, since the characters have many of the same skills and dispositions. But whereas Reacher wears the white hat, Parker is a black hat.
You’re English, which surprises a lot of people, but you’ve set all these novels in the U.S. The voice and setting feel decidedly American. How do you manage that?
A character like Reacher can only operate in dangerous, frontier places. This sort of character was born in Europe when it was an empty, dangerous continent, but would not work there now. He had to be represented in America; he wouldn’t have worked anywhere else. It was a choice of fitting the character to the environment. I suppose it could have been Australia.
Or Canada? We’re vast and empty.
Possibly too empty and you might not find enough trouble.
Oh, there’s plenty, even if we don’t have militias and the like. You could always send him to the Yukon.
I might do that. The vastness and emptiness of Canada is certainly Reacher territory.
Your use of the American landscape is powerful, evoking South Dakota or Montana or Mississippi as if you’ve spent a lot of time there. Have you?
Not as a matter of research. I’m not the sort of writer who works that way. I’m usually somewhere for another reason: a reading or event. Then I start to think about the place and let it percolate for a bit before beginning to read about it. In some ways, it’s easier for a foreigner. You walk into a place. Everything is new and a first impression. A stranger has to analyze and explain why things are the way they are.
And Reacher is such a stranger?
Yes, he’s really in my position. He’s an American citizen but hasn’t lived there much, so he’s discovering the country much like a stranger. He sees everything with fresh eyes, too.
You also display considerable knowledge of the “manly” things: weapons, cars, tools, military hierarchies.
I’m just curious. I have a trivial mind, like to know how things work and what fits where. I like to operate on the level of detail and precision.
