Reacher The stories behind the stories

Lee Child

Book - 2025

"After making his debut in 1997's 'Killing floor,' Jack Reacher has quickly become one of the most popular--and most enduring--fictional heroes to emerge in the past half century. Now, his creator tells the stories behind the stories. These are the origin tales of all of the Reacher novels written solely by Lee Child, chock full of colorful anecdotes and intriguing inspirations. One by one, they expand upon each novel and place it in the context not only of the author's life, but of the world outside the books. And taken together, they chart the rise of an action icon, from 'Killing floor' to 2019's 'Blue moon.' An afterword by crime fiction expert and bookseller Otto Penzler considers the i...mportance of the character and novels in the canon of contemporary crime fiction. This volume also includes an original Reacher short story--the first new Reacher appearance entirely written by Lee Child since 2019. Entertaining and enlightening, 'Reacher: the stories behind the stories' is a must-read for fans of the Jack Reacher series and a capstone to any collection of this excellent author"--

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Subjects
Genres
Autobiographies
Literary criticism
Critiques littéraires
Published
New York : The Mysterious Press [2025]
Language
English
Main Author
Lee Child (author, -)
Other Authors
Otto Penzler (writer of afterword)
Edition
First edition
Item Description
"Featuring a new, original Reacher short story, 'A better place.'"
Physical Description
xiii, 221 pages ; 20 cm
ISBN
9781613167069
  • Introduction / by Lee Child
  • Killing floor (1997)
  • Die trying (1998)
  • Tripwire (1999)
  • Running blind (2000)
  • Echo burning (2001)
  • Without fail (2002)
  • Persuader (2003)
  • The enemy (2004)
  • One shot (2005)
  • The hard way (2006)
  • Bad luck and trouble (2007)
  • Nothing to lose (2008)
  • Gone tomorrow (2009)
  • 61 hours (2010)
  • Worth dying for (2010)
  • The affair (2011)
  • A wanted man (2012)
  • Never go back (2013)
  • Personal (2014)
  • Make me (2015)
  • Night school (2014)
  • The midnight line (2017)
  • Past tense (2018)
  • Blue moon (2019)
  • A better place
  • Afterword / by Otto Penzler.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this occasionally insightful curio, Child (In Too Deep) shares the inspirations for 24 of his Jack Reacher novels, mostly pulling from introductions he wrote for each book's special edition. He tackles the novels in series order, giving the book a loose narrative arc beginning in the 1990s, when he started writing Killing Floor after being laid off from a TV directing job. After that book's success, the series' popularity gradually gathered steam in the 2000s, and Child writes of his resulting experiments with story structure, shifting from "one-track first-person narrative set in a small no-account rural town" to "a third-person multiple-POV story involving glossy elements like the White House and the Hoover Building." The terse prose and short chapters lend the collection a somewhat phoned-in quality, but personal revelations are scattered among the shop talk. Most memorably, Child writes of responding "OK" to news of his father's death ("This was a typical conversation with most of my family. Short, sharp, to the point, nothing wasted"). Though lacking in broad appeal, this offers a handful of worthwhile tidbits for die-hard Jack Reacher fans. Agent: Darley Anderson, Darley Anderson Agency. (Sept.)

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