When a beloved book series moves to the screen (big or small), the power of the visual is so great that the screen avatar takes over the print. When you think Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe comes to mind, Elijah Wood for Frodo, Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones and Lena Headey for Cersei Lannister.
The converse is true in the case of Jack Reacher, Lee Child’s nomadic ex-military cop, who has been described as “part Rambo and part Rimbaud,” and we have Tom Cruise to thank for that. The second movie, Never Go Back , following 2012’s Jack Reacher is supremely underwhelming. An ageing Tom Cruise and the probable- daughter track plays out like the Taken series, but Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills is a much more fun dad than Cruise’s Reacher.
Child, who started writing when he lost his job, has said he used the motif of the “knight errant” in creating his protagonist. In an interview to Time Magazine , Child says, “He is the descendant of a very ancient tradition: the noble loner, the mysterious stranger, who has shown up in stories forever…” The choice of Never Go Back for Reacher’s second screen outing, (the first was based on One Shot ), is interesting.
Never Go Back is the 18th book in the series and marks the conclusion of the Susan Turner arc, which started in 61 Hours , the 14th book. An accident in a bus full of senior citizens and Reacher lands him in the snow-bound town of Bolton. Naturally nothing is as it should be and there is a particularly nasty bit of work called Plato who has a way of ensuring no one refers to his height. Turner commands Reacher’s old unit, the 110th Special Investigations Unit. Reacher likes Turner’s voice and decides to look her up. The book ends in a cliff-hanger and we are not sure if Reacher made it alive.
Well he does and Worth Dying For , the 15th book of the series and the second to be published in 2010, sees Reacher in rural Nebraska on route to Virginia and Turner. When a doctor tells a stiff Reacher, his injuries are consistent with fighting a hurricane, we can hug ourselves with counterfeited glee for we know it was not a hurricane Reacher fought. Being the post-feminist gentleman that he is, Reacher cannot let a woman be abused by her husband, and so he ensures the wife is treated by the reluctant doctor and the husband has his nose smashed in. By doing that Reacher crosses swords with the Duncans, a powerful family who are hiding a very ugly secret.
Worth Dying For ends with Reacher back on the road to Virginia but then Child mixes things up in the 16th book, The Affair (2011), which is set six months before the events of the first Jack Reacher book, Killing Floor . There is a poignancy as Reacher tries to get in touch with his brother, and we also get to know the circumstances that led to Reacher leaving the Army. The folding toothbrush makes its debut in the story. In the small Mississippi town of Carter’s Crossing, Reacher is investigating a gruesome murder. That the victim is a soldier’s girlfriend might or might not complicate matters. The sheriff, the beautiful Elizabeth Deveraux might have a couple of secrets of her own.
Reacher is back on the way to Virginia in A Wanted Man (2012) when he hitches a ride from the wrong car. A murder, arms deals gone bad, a worried mum, a kidnapped little girl, moles, secret agents and terrorists are all in the mix in the 17th book. And finally with Never Go Back (2013) Reacher is in Susan Turner’s office ready to take her out for dinner, only he cannot as she is in jail. Reacher meanwhile is arrested for murder and also has a paternity suit hanging over him — he may or may not have a 15-year-old daughter. Child teases us some more by having Reacher and Turner in adjacent cells not having met yet. Finally when the two meet, the pay-off is huge — we have been waiting for four years. The movie finishes four books in four minutes of the titles!
Through the Turner arc, we get to know details about Reacher including conclusively proving he is “not feral,” the reason for the dent on the desk, and the fact that he read the Romantics well enough to know of De Quincey. Now that the movie is out of the way, we can look forward to Night School , which goes back to Reacher’s Army days. The book is out on November 7 and we take guilty pleasure in prime number factorization, fiendish villains, beautiful women and Jack Reacher’s effective brand of justice.
