As the Cheese Fry reluctantly slides into middle age, one of the membership requirements of that demographic involves partaking in the phenomenon of fictional bad ass Jack Reacher. He's a veteran who used to be an Army investigator which means he can solve mysteries like Hercule Poirot and handle fistfights and firearms like John Wick. Tom Cruise played Reacher in a couple of movies (Jack Reacher, 2012; Never Go Back, 2016) but now Alan Ritchson plays him in a pretty successful Amazon Prime series adaptation that premiered back in 2022. Season three of that show is coming soon.
If you hadn't heard of Jack Reacher prior to those movies and shows, you're likely not a male over age 40. Because, people, the character of Jack Reacher is very big business. Author Lee Child (who's actually from the UK) has cranked out 28 novels since 1997. That's more or less one book a year. He must be tired because Child is now in the process of handing Reacher author responsibilities to his little brother.
Die-hard Reacher fans howled when Cruise made his movies because Reacher on the page, you see, is a mountain of a man, while Cruise is famously more on the shorter side. Fans seem much more pleased with Ritchson's performance. He's a big guy, for sure - so big that it stretches plausibility that so many average-sized bad guys seems so willing to take him on. (This obvious physical mismatch in every confrontation is a similar issue in the books. Just how dumb and delusional are these villains?) While the casting agent may have gotten the size right, Ritchson lacks Cruise's charisma. Ritchson's Reacher gives a dry, deadpan performance that borders on the dull at times. But we digress.
With our reading stack running low a few months ago, we decided to sample the paperback world of Jack Reacher (via a pile of books given to us by, you guessed it, our 80-year-old father). Since then, we've read three of Child's 28 books, which is 11% of the total Jack Reacher output. We read One Shot (Reacher clears the name of a man accused of killing five people - this is the one that Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher movie was based on), we read 61 Hours (Reacher uncovers a drug smuggling plot with Mexican cartels), and we read The Hard Way (Reacher gets involved in a New York City kidnapping).
To us, the Amazon series does a pretty good capturing the Reacher book vibe. (If you're curious, season one was an adaptation of the book Killing Floor and season two adapted Bad Luck and Trouble.)
As noted, we've only read 11% of the books, which is a small sample. Even so, as of now we have identified six characteristics of the prototypical Jack Reacher story.
1. Reacher will be dragged into the story. Reacher isn't really looking to help. He stumbles into a situation, often wants very much to look the other way and mind his own business, but then his moral code demands that he help once he fully understands what's going on. In 61 Hours, Reacher uncovers a conspiracy after his Greyhound bus crashes on a snowy highway and leaves him stranded in a very corrupt town. In The Hard Way, he's sitting at a Manhattan coffee shop and happens to see a kidnapping ransom drop and gets asked about what he saw. He's like an R-rated Jessica Fletcher from the old "Murder She Wrote" TV show where she finds a dead body every time she travels.
A corollary to this is what is perhaps most notable about the character: (1a.) Reacher is a drifter. He wanders from town to town on trains and buses, spends a few weeks here, then moves along. The books (and show) has a lot of fun with his peculiar lifestyle - the only thing he carries with him is a toothbrush, he wears the same clothes over and over until buys new ones at thrift stores, that sort of thing. There are samurai stories (and Western copycats) similar to this about fierce warriors who walk the countryside providing help as needed then disappearing over the horizon, but we couldn't easily find a name for that sort of story. There is a tradition of "picaresque" stories, but those seem to involve lower-class people who get into amusing adventures - one website, for example, suggested that Forrest Gump is a variation on picaresque. (We're told "picaresque" stories often have a satirical cultural element, which is intriguing because Lee Child's plots lean hard on exposing corruption - crooked cops, lawyers, military, veterans. Reacher is often the sole voice of honor and morality.) In any event, Reacher is more of a Shane-style antihero figure who shows up in town, kills the bad guys, then rides off on his horse before the bodies are cold. He does terrible things for the right reasons.
2. The mystery will be convoluted. As we read these books, more than once we got hopelessly confused trying to follow who's doing what to do and why. These are not straight ahead "who done its" - the books feature complex, tangled, layered conspiracies and cover-ups. Nothing is simple. And so we as the reader just have to keep going and accept what's happening without always fully understanding it. (This shows how Lee Child is trying to weave together so many character needs and schemes. But authors like Elmore Leonard handle just as many complicated characters and crossed purposes and plot turns with crisp clarity. It can sometimes feel like Child thinks only confusing plots provide suitable gravitas and import.)
3. Reacher will showcase Sherlock Holmes-style deductive reasoning. It took us a while to really notice this, but Reacher is as mentally sharp as he is physically powerful. He typically takes note of the smallest details and riffs on those to spin larger theories and hypotheses. He'll also frequently give quick lectures about human behavior to either explain why someone might do (or not do) something or how he's decided on a specific plan. He's almost always right, of course. When this works, it's a lot of fun, although there are certainly many times when Reacher makes a big, fairly implausible leap of logic and one can't help with offer an eyeroll in response.
4. Reacher will have sex with a female sidekick. Like James Bond, Reacher always seems to end up solving a mystery with a smart, attractive (and conveniently single) woman. Consenting adults then do what consenting adults do.
5. Reacher will show repeatedly that nothing fazes him. There are two sides to this coin.
* This "unflappability" aspect is probably the biggest downside to the character and his stories. Drama and tension arise from conflict, from worrying about what will happen to the protagonist. While many characters around Reacher suffer and face real consequences, Reacher is a superhero. He's never in danger. He's never afraid. He always has a plan. If you think of Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves or other A-list actors, notice how their movies often work hard to make you think maybe - just maybe - the hero won't make it. They get beat up, they suffer setbacks, they wonder how in the hell they're going to get out of an impossible situation. One never really gets the sense that Reacher is in over his head. He can handle whatever the story's villains throw at him. And if the plot twists and Reacher's first plan fails, he'll quickly improvise a new plan that's better than the old plan. He's like James T. Kirk - he literally doesn't believe in the no-win scenario.
* Looked at another way, however, that "unflappability" is surely key to Reacher's wide popularity. It's absolutely a positive. This is a guy who can handle any situation. He oozes supreme confidence. He knows what to say, what not to say, and what to ask (and, also, what the answers he hears might really mean). And if needed, this is a guy who can easily take care of business with his fists or a weapon. Think about how those traits might appeal to the flabby guy killing time before another boring work day or the frazzled dad facing mortgage payments and weekends of chores and youth sports. It may seem simplistic (or even distasteful in an supposedly enlightened 21st century world), but we here at the Cheese Fry believe that Reacher is 100% an aspirational, wish-fulfillment figure for frustrated middle-aged men everywhere. We wish we could be him.
In other words, these stories are engaging and successful because readers aren't wondering IF Reacher will survive, but HOW he will survive.
6. Reacher will kill a lot of people. In one of the books, Reacher briefly notes that biologically he just doesn't feel remorse or regret. And so if you're someone he's judged to be a criminal deserving of death (or maiming), he will deliver that punishment without mercy using whatever tool he can find. Those violent moments of delicious comeuppance deliver a real zing of pleasure.
And there you have it. Jack Reacher is the reluctant hero who uses unflappable confidence and deductive powers to solve convoluted mysteries that end in violent punishment of the bad guys. And he sleeps with the hot woman sidekick along the way. Are you not entertained?
If and when we read a fourth Jack Reacher novel, we fully expect these six characteristic to be present.
