George Beahm - The Jack Reacher Field Manual: An Unofficial Companion to Lee Childs Reacher Novels

Lee Child Says...

People are either frustrated because they cant make up their mind all day, or frustrated that they have to conceal their true judgment. Thats the entire focus of fiction: to give people what they cant get out of their real life. Thats absolutely what fiction is for.

Second, Reacher is morally unambiguous. He has a clearly defined sense of the world, and he does his part to right wrongs, when most of us would be reluctant to get involved or hamstrung by circumstances. Reacher, you see, cant not get involved: He chooses not to look away, and thus places himself in the role of the reluctant hero.

Reluctant heroes are nothing new. Reacher, in fact, is a time-honored archetype whose fictional beginnings go very far back in history (see ):

[Reacher as a knight-errant] wasnt an invention out of the blue in the twentieth century; it was a continuation of the western themes, the mysterious stranger who shows up, for either good or illShane or the Lone Ranger. And that wasnt an invention from the nineteenth century either: it dates back to the Middle Ages in Europe when you had the knight-errant, which in itself dates back to Scandinavian sagas and the Anglo Saxon poems, even going back to religious stories, Sabian myths. So I see it as a continuation of something thats always been around in human narrative. I think thats a very powerful theme and that the popularity of characters such as Reacher is explained by the fact that weve always wanted these characters. Weve [re]invented them over and over for thousands of years.

Reacher is essentially a contemporary reinvention, a modern-day knight-errant who sallies forth to show us that, in the end, good will triumph, not necessarily through the due process of law, handicapped by the slow machinations of the court system, but through two-fisted justice meted out by him. Hes a self-appointed judge and jury, and sometimes executioner, but Reachers abiding sense of honor keeps him in perpetual check. As Child explained to Bryan Curtis, At a very simple point, the Reacher stories are revenge stories. Somebody does a very bad thing, and Reacher takes revenge... The guy is just obliterated . Thats certainly cathartic for me.

The smug protagonist who goes up against Reacher may feel hes beyond the reach of the law, but hes not beyond Jacks reach. In the end, Reacher always gets his man.

Its cathartic prose for the reader, too, that makes for deeply satisfying reading, guaranteeing the reader will come back for more.