Past Tense? Or Just Tense?

When I implied in my recent post about the thriller 61 Hours that protagonist Jack Reacher seemed to be dead at book’s end, I neglected to take into account the amazing staying power of author Lee Child. A short new note on Child’s Web site reads:

Does Reacher survive the explosive ending of 61 Hours? You bet your sweet bippy!

Are we going to tell you anything more about the story of Worth Dying For? Not yet we’re not.

OK, Jack. But couldn’t you at least have called the lovely Susan Turner in Virginia? Or is Worth Dying For (due for release in Britain in September, and in the States in October) about an earlier Reacher adventure?

Mother of Mercy, Is This the End of Reacher?

I once got into trouble for revealing, in a review of Walter Mosley’s A Little Yellow Dog (1995), that Mouse--Easy Rawlins’ trusty and homicidal buddy--was apparently dead. As it turned out, Mosley changed his mind and brought Mouse back to life in his next book.

I don’t want to make that same sort of mistake again. But a close reading of Lee Child’s superb new Jack Reacher thriller, 61 Hours (Delacorte), leads me to think of Edward G. Robinson’s last line in the 1931 film Little Caesar: “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?”

The biggest hint I can offer is not that Reacher has disappeared after a toxic explosion near the frigid town of Bolton, South Dakota. Our Jack has certainly disappeared before, and always managed to come back. But in this case he has built up a close vocal relationship with a woman in Virginia, and at the book’s end she still hasn’t heard a word from him a month after the blast.

Reacher arrived in Bolton the way he usually enters a new town--by accident. This time, he’s hitched a ride on a tour bus taking a group of senior citizens to Mount Rushmore. The bus is driven off the icy road by a coincidence--another Child specialty. Reacher and the driver help the other passengers stay alive until help comes. Then, back in Bolton, Reacher is drafted/blackmailed into helping the local cops solve a very strange mystery: What does an odd cement structure in the middle of an empty field, built 50 years before, have to do with a thriving local meth industry run by bikers, and with a Mexican drug lord called Plato?

Plato is the most frightening and fascinating fictional heavy in recent memory. Here’s how he is introduced: “Plato was dressed in chinos and a white button-down shirt and black leather penny loafer shoes, all from the Brooks Brothers’ boys’ collection. The shoes and the clothes fit very well, but he looked odd in them. They were made for fat white middle-class American children, and Plato was old and brown and squat and had a shaved bullet head ...” (Plato, who is 4-foot-11, once cut off a man’s legs to match his own height, after the man called him a dwarf.)

We also learn a lot more about Jack Reacher in these pages:

He lived nowhere, and always had. He had been born the son of a serving military officer, in a Berlin infirmary, and since the day he had been carried out of it swaddled in blankets he had been dragged all over the world ...

I could go on for pages, talking about how Child gets us to believe precisely what it’s like inside a top security prison, or how extreme cold affects the human body. But I don’t want to spoil an instant of the pleasure you’ll derive from reading 61 Hours.

An Hour with Lee Child

Another year, another Jack Reacher novel from author Lee Child, right? Except that 2010 will bring fans of Child’s fictional former military cop two of his adventures, not just one. The first book, titled 61 Hours, is already on sale in Britain, and is rapidly climbing the sales charts. The U.S. edition is set for release in mid-May, and a listing on The New York Times bestseller rundown seems inevitable. Then, in the fall, another, as-yet-untitled Reacher story is due for publication on both sides of the Atlantic, bringing the British-born Child (né Jim Grant) more renown and, of course, a fatter wallet.

I have been following Child’s career for many years now, and by tradition we meet annually at the Waterstones Deansgate bookstore in Manchester, where he always begins his UK publicity tours. Over dinner, we catch up on our respective lives, and during each encounter I learn a little more about his craft and what to expect from his Reacher series. Child has proved to be one of best ambassadors for the crime/thriller genre. He never forgets his oldest fans and those who supported him back in his early writing days, after he changed careers from TV production to penning fiction.

This year we were unable to dine after the Deansgate event; Child had to rush off to London, while I was heading to Brighton for the 2010 World Horror Convention, an event that was held for the first time in Great Britain this year. Nonetheless, we managed to carve out some coffee-and-chat time in advance of his speaking at Waterstones. During our conversation, I asked him about the importance of weather in his new novel, his views on book piracy, and why there’s no sibling rivalry between him and his author brother, Andrew Grant.

Ali Karim: What came first when you embarked upon writing 61 Hours? Was it the expansive plot that ultimately had to be spread over two novels? Were you feeling pressured by your publishers? Or was it purely an idea that came into your mind?

Lee Child: You mean about the end of 61 Hours?

AK: Yes ...

LC: I see the end of 61 Hours a little differently from many who have read it. It’s about something I have been trying to develop over the last few books--basically to trust the reader a little bit more, inasmuch as in previous books I’d lay out the problem and then provide the solution. In 61 Hours, what I’ve done is lay out the problem, but trust the reader to uncover the solution.

There is no mystery to the solution, or the ending. Everything is there, the closure, the evidence is there, anyone can work out what must have happened, and it’s up to the reader to work it out. It’s all completely transparent.

AK: Even so, all of us are going to have to wait to read your next book, coming out later this year.

LC: The next one comes out in September in the UK and October in the United States.

AK: And do you have a working title for that yet?

LC: Not yet. It’s something that we’re working on currently, and we hope to have it soon.

AK: Location is always important to you in the Jack Reacher series. So why send your man off to South Dakota?

LC: Well, it’s not so much about South Dakota, but more about temperature. I was thinking about one of my earlier books--Echo Burning [2001], set in West Texas, where it was incredibly hot. The heat becomes essentially a character in that book, and I thought I’d like to do a book where unbelievably cold weather becomes the same type of character. Writing about the cold is something I’ve wanted to do for many years, but I’ve always been a little inhibited by Alistair MacLean, a big hero of mine and a thriller writer who was pre-eminent at writing about cold weather. Novels such as Night Without End [and] Ice Station Zebra, set up above the Arctic Circle where the cold weather is a real factor--he did [them] so well. I often wondered if I could write a novel set against the cold. I decided eventually to give it a go, setting a book against an icy backdrop--hence, 61 Hours is set in a cold winter in South Dakota.

AK: You have also contributed a piece to another book coming out this summer, the International Thriller Writers project, Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads, edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner. Could you tell us a little bit about that volume?

LC: Sure. The project stemmed from a question ITW is interested in answering: “What is a thriller?” It is a very difficult question to answer, so one way is to lay out 100 books and say, “This is what a thriller is,” using great thriller novels to define the genre. My contribution went way, way back [to the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur], as there is always a secondary question: “What was the first thriller or the earliest thriller?” Many people sometimes look back 100 years to what was then referred to as “a novel of sensation,” or perhaps Wilkie Collins, John Buchan, or Erskine Childers. But in my opinion, you need to look much further back, and yes, there will be work[s] lost in prehistory. But for my money the first thriller that we know about was Theseus and the Minotaur, which is 3,500 years old and in fact is an identical story to Ian Fleming’s Dr. No, so therefore the prototype of the thriller novel.

AK: Something we talked about earlier is that my particular contribution to the ITW book is an essay about Eric Ambler’s A Coffin for Dimitrios (aka The Mask of Dimitrios), and I understand you actually have a link to author Ambler.

LC: Yes, indeed. I went to the same high school as Ambler, not of course in the same year ... [Laughs] He was a little older than me ...

AK: While doing some research earlier today, I was alarmed to discover that 61 Hours is available as an E-book on a BitTorrent Web site for illegal download. What is your perspective on the piracy of books via the Internet and the issues surrounding E-books, the iPod, the iPad, and digital rights management?

LC: Well, we have two major problems. Firstly, we have this irrational expectation from the customer about price: There seems be this bizarre logic that because an item is delivered electronically, it should be free. Electronic delivery eliminates the physical book that needs to be manufactured, stored, delivered, stocked, etc., [but] the manufacture and supply [of creative works still] comes with a cost. So if you take as an “over the thumb” average cost of an average book [ignoring heavily discounted bestsellers] ... [and] say that manufacture and supply chain cost is £4 [$7 U.S.] per book, then the rest is £10 [$18]. That makes the book on a shelf cost of £14 [$25]. So, if you had an electronic book, and you strip out the manufacture and supply chain cost, the item would cost, say £10. Some [members] of the public, however, feel that an electronic book should be priced at £0.99 [$1.85], which is crazy logic.

Problem two is that digital distribution is not as cheap as people think it is, because the service costs are high as well as the [cost of] piracy protection, which is very expensive and complex. We are suffering piracy in the same way that physical bookstores suffer shoplifting. There will always be a proportion of books suffering “shrinkage,” as they refer to it in the retail world. Authors like me, and my peers and contemporaries are getting their books pirated several hundred times a week. Therefore, this problem needs to be addressed by some form of digital rights management, which is very expensive to do. So, this whole idea that digital distribution is cost-free is totally wrong--in fact, delusional.

AK: The Rap Sheet reported last month that you made a rather interesting appearance at this year’s Left Coast Crime convention in Los Angeles. Care to tell us about it?

LC: I remember nothing about that interview. [Laughs] It was done by Gregg Hurwitz, so it was completely off-the-wall. Seriously, it was a great convention, and as the title LCC suggests, it was on the far Left Coast of America, and therefore tends to be a smaller convention, more relaxed, more chilled. I had a tremendous time.

AK: There’s another book landing shortly, called Die Twice, by somebody you know particularly well, Andrew Grant. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

LC: Yes, sure, it is by my younger brother, his second book that I read a little while ago--and I was impressed. In fact, that reminds me of a question Gregg asked me at LCC 2010: “How’d I feel if Die Twice was the next Da Vinci Code?” I would feel great, there is no sibling rivalry between Andrew and I, due to the age difference. I had basically left home around the time he was out of his crib. In fact, he’s closer in age terms to my daughter than me.

You’ve got kids, Ali, so how would you feel if any of your kids were amazingly successful?

AK: I’d be delighted!

LC: Exactly! And that’s how I feel about Andrew. If he becomes the next Dan Brown, I’d feel terrific.

AK: Andrew’s writing style is very different from yours, and he tends to focus on the espionage angle. But he’s a fine thriller writer. Has that at all to do with shared reading tastes?

LC: Yes, I think you’re right; he read similar books to me. But where we diverge is that he’s had much more exposure to the corporate world, in the nooks and crannies, a bit like you, where you see some “dodgy” dealings and government interventions--he knows that stuff for real. Interview him some time, and ask him about the job he was offered straight out of university. I don’t have that government background or insight, so my work is very different.

AK: And does all of this fame for you and Andrew put pressure on your other brother?

LC: I actually have two other brothers, but they’re illiterate, so there’s no worry there. [Laughs]

Editor’s note: The Rap Sheet would like to thank Nick Lewis, the events coordinator at Waterstones Deansgate, for the use of his office to record this interview.

READ MORE: “Is American Fiction Killing the Tough Guy?” by David Granger (Esquire).

It’s a Man’s Job to Take on Child

Easily the best interview I’ve seen at the 2010 Left Coast Crime conference in Los Angeles was the one conducted earlier today, with thriller writer Gregg Hurwitz firing questions at Lee Child, the creator of series protagonist Jack Reacher (61 Hours).

There were several reasons for the success of this exchange. The first was that Hurwitz (shown at left) had prepared well. He had an excellent list of probing queries that covered unique ground, avoiding the clichéd “Do you outline?” and “Where do you get your ideas” sorts of interrogatories that you so often hear during mystery conference interviews. In addition, Hurwitz handled the interview itself with aplomb. He was calm, cool, and collected. He bantered easily with a man who, he explained at very the beginning, does not suffer fools gladly. And he did not always let Child off the hook with humorous throwaway responses, nor did he get in the way when Child launched into serious topics.

The other reason for the success of this exchange, of course, was Child himself. He gave responses that ranged from bitingly sarcastic, to thoughtful and erudite, to surprisingly candid and touching.

In that last category, Hurwitz asked Child at one point about his greatest regret. Child (shown below) said he lamented a hiring decision he made when he was working for BBC Television in the UK. He had been charged with selecting a sort of on-air continuity person who would provide the “connective tissue” between shows with voice-overs, and who would give on-camera introductions. In response to the casting call for the job, he received many videotaped demos from candidates. Most of them, he said, were not very good. But there was one video that stood out.

That video started with a close-up of a woman speaking. He liked her looks and he liked her voice. Gradually the camera pulled wider and he realized that she was sitting in a car. As it pulled wider still, he realized that she had no arms. She had been a Thalidomide baby and was born with only vestigial stubs at the top of her shoulders. Although he still thought she was the best candidate, Child said he couldn’t force both himself and the woman through the gauntlet that would need to be run to win her the job.

In the end, he instead chose a woman who had emigrated to Britain from Trinidad. She did well and went on to have a bigger role at the BBC. Later, she went back to visit her family in Trinidad. There, she was thought to be very successful, and a robber assumed that she had a great deal of money. He broke into her family’s house on the Caribbean island and killed her and two other people.

Child told his audience that his decision had been doubly cursed. Perhaps this is why, when he was asked to say what novel he would choose to take with him to a desert island, he selected William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice.

In a lighter vein, Hurwitz asked Child to talk about the most difficult part of the writing process. As you will see in the video embedded below, Child compared the creation of a book to the male role in sex, and said that the pre-climax middle was the hardest, because--as in sex--you have to keeping going until your partner comes (that is, until you have a respectable number of pages), and then you can finally “let go.” (Note: You’ll want to turn up the volume on this video in order to hear it clearly.)



At the end of the interview, Child fielded a few questions from the audience. He had noted earlier that he didn’t want to leave this earth with his Reacher series incomplete, so he plans to write the last book at the appropriate time and then retire. An audience member asked him whether that meant he would kill off Reacher at some point.

Child answered, “yes.” He explained that the title of the last book would be Die Alone and it would close with a scene in which Reacher is finally backed into a corner where he cannot escape without mortal injury. Reacher would then crawl painfully back to his cheap motel room, where he would bleed out in its dingy bathroom.

The timing of Die Alone’s publication, he said, depends on us, the readers. Meaning that he will keep writing as long as we keep buying. A satisfying arrangement for all.

READ MORE: “Left Coast Crime L.A. Friday Night and Saturday,” by Jeri Westerson (Getting Medieval); “Report from the Left
Coast,” by Eric Beetner.

“Business, Moscow-style”

Are novels really too long for modern audiences, as some people contend? Then The New York Times has one solution: it’s new op-ed page Summer Thrillers series. Here’s the beginning of the latest entry in that series, a brief Jack Reacher tale called “A Guy Walks into a Bar,” penned by Rap Sheet favorite Lee Child:

She was about 19. No older. Maybe younger. An insurance company would have given her 60 more years to live. I figured a more accurate projection was 36 hours, or 36 minutes if things went wrong from the get-go.

She was blond and blue-eyed, but not American. American girls have a glow, a smoothness, from many generations of plenty. This girl was different. Her ancestors had known hardship and fear. That inheritance was in her face and her movements. Her eyes were wary. Her body was lean. Not the kind of lean you get from a diet, but the Darwinian kind of lean you get when your grandparents had no food--and either starved or didn’t. Her movements were fragile and tense, a little alert, a little nervous, though on the face of it she was having as good a time as a girl could get.

She was in a New York bar, drinking beer, listening to a band, and she was in love with the guitar player. That was clear. The part of her gaze that wasn’t wary was filled with adoration, and it was all aimed in his direction. She was probably Russian. She was rich. She was alone at a table near the stage and she had a pile of ATM-fresh twenties in front of her and she was paying for each new bottle with one of them and she wasn’t asking for change. The waitresses loved her.

You can read all of Child’s short short story here.

Child of His Times

Another year brings another chance for me to break bread with Lee Child, the British creator of series protagonist Jack Reacher. My annual encounters with the astute Mr. Child have become an unofficial tradition of mine. As a longtime reader of his Reacher thrillers, and an admirer of what this author does for the crime-fiction genre, it’s good to meet him annually and discover what’s new in his world.

I usually bump into Child several times each year. In 2008, for instance, I saw him when he toured the UK with his with his 12th novel, Nothing to Lose, and then again at Bouchercon in Baltimore. This year, I’m likely to meet up with him on several occasions, first as he tours throughout the British Isles to promote yet another Jack Reacher novel, Gone Tomorrow (also available in the States). Then again, when we both attend the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival in July, and at Bouchercon in Indianapolis this coming fall.

There’s something special about seeing him this year, though, because Gone Tomorrow--the 13th entry in his Reacher series--is his most tense and thought-provoking work of fiction yet. And considering how consistent these books have been in quality, that’s a huge achievement. As enjoyable as Nothing to Lose was, it was almost an update of his blistering debut work, Killing Floor (1997). Gone Tomorrow, though, is a ground-breaker. Written from Reacher’s first-person viewpoint, it finds the former U.S. military policeman failing to save a woman, Susan Marks, in the New York City subway system early one morning. Instead of simply jumping in front of the oncoming train, Marks first catches Reacher’s eye by showing the outward characteristics of being a suicide bomber. Only then does she jam a handgun into her mouth and pull the trigger. Reacher, feeling a touch of guilt about not having saved Marks, sets out to investigate why she took her own life. The trail leads him to her adopted brother, a middle-ranking cop, then to John Sansom, a U.S. politician, and Sansom’s ambitious wife, Elspeth. It seems that Sansom is reaching for the top of the American political ladder, and needs to avoid any blemishes from his past coming to light. Which makes his long-ago work with the elite Delta Squad something of a problem. As Reacher follows his trail to Cold War-era West Germany and two refugees from the old Eastern Bloc, the stunning Lila Hoth and her mother, Svetlana, appear in the plot to link Sansom with some dodgy dealings during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

With its brief chapters, short sentences, and staccato-style narrative, Gone Tomorrow charges along as rapidly as the subway train that appears in its opening chapter. The story is violent, hip, and bang-up-to-date, a dive into the post-9/11 world of dark politics and conspiratorial forces. Action-adventure stories are rarely better concocted than this one.

After sending me a review copy of Gone Tomorrow, Patsy Irwin, the publicity manager at Child’s UK publisher, Transworld, invited me to share a meal with the author in the wake of his scheduled guest appearance at the Waterstone’s Deansgate store in Manchester, England. (We had reservations at Manchester’s celebrated Gaucho Grill--Child surely does like his red meat!) First, however, I would have a chance to interview him--again.

Child looked remarkably well when I saw him, considering that he was midway through his UK/Ireland book tour. Then again, he’d just returned from a vacation, which had obviously recharged his batteries. Armed with questions about some modifications in his writing style, the new book-selling competition presented by his younger brother, and an anecdote from critic-author Mike Ripley, I switched on my tape recorder and began our latest exchange.

Ali Karim: I really enjoyed Gone Tomorrow. But it provokes the question of why you returned to the first-person voice in this book.

Lee Child: I want to do first-person every time; that’s the default position. ... But the way it’s worked out, in nine of the books I haven’t been able to do first-person, because of the way the story unfolds in terms of alternate viewpoints and parallel tracks and the intervention of other characters--which all meant I needed to deploy third-person. I would say, as a generalization, that for most thriller fiction third-person works best, so you can get the “meanwhile back at the ranch” [perspective], and the obvious collision course of the two narratives [moving] toward the conclusion. But for some stories you can use first-person, and if I get a chance I will always try and use first-person. It’s very natural, very personal, and once in a while it really refreshes the Reacher character, because the reader can get close to him, as they are in his head, and it is a very pure voice.

AK: One of the reasons I think Gone Tomorrow is among the strongest entries in your series is its writing style--it appears to have a “beat,” a rhythm if you will.

LC: Thank you, I’ve always tried to be rhythmic. And without being too pretentious about it, there is a strong parallel between prose and music, linked to a time-base or beat as you move forward. ... I work very hard at the propulsive aspect of the words, to build a beat, if you will, but you also need light and shade. In Gone Tomorrow, the whole of the book was very fast to write, and it built up a beat. The first third is the set-up, and then the last two-thirds is the conclusion; so it not only was written fast, but when I re-read it and re-edited it, it was a very fast read.

AK: Without giving away the ending, were you concerned about involving Reacher in what appears to be a story heavily linked to the “war on terror” and politics surrounding that issue?

LC: Not really, as the novel’s theme is more about the security apparatus that is a feature of our lives now. If you are at the airport and there is a problem, you are less willing to make a fuss about it, because by making a fuss you might end up on some list, and that kind of thing. The security apparatus affects all our lives, and Reacher is no different, as you can’t mess with these people.

AK: You pepper your narrative with plenty of technical trivia, such as the engineering background of the New York City subway trains. Where do you get all of that information?

LC: Just natural observational reading. Some of that stuff I might have read about 20 years ago, or I might have read it last week. I have a mind that is a trivia magnet. I know nothing of any real value, but I’m brimming with useless trivia.

AK: Tell us about your recently heightened role with the Mystery Writers of America.

LC: Well, they elected me president for 2009, which is great honor. And I am very happy to do it, because the MWA is a wonderful organization and the oldest in its field. Some of the previous presidents are amazing--Dashiell Hammett, Georges Simenon--so I feel very honored to follow behind them. But 2009 is a very tough year, as we will have to act almost like a trade union, more than a normal trade association would do, due to the poor state of the economy. We will have to watch out for our people during these tough times. Of course things will pick up, but we have to make sure that as many of us make it through the choppy water of the economy as we can.

AK: As president of the MWA, I assume you have a lot of work behind the scenes in regard to the Edgar Awards and such.

LC: Yes, the Edgars are a big thing. I had to MC the awards night [last month]. In fact, the British tour [for Gone Tomorrow] was just a little tight, because I [had] to catch the red-eye to be back in New York for the banquet.

AK: And I see that you’ve recently been revisiting your alma mater, the University of Sheffield.

LC: I was invited to be a visiting professor last year at the university, and in fact I’m [going] back this summer, just before Harrogate, because they are giving me an honorary doctorate.

AK: “Dr. Lee”? Wow, that’ll be rather cool.

LC: Yes, I’ll be a Doctor of Letters. I think universities are trying to open up a bit and recognize the alumni who have been recognized not in the traditional academic fields.

AK: I notice every now and then that Mike Ripley, who serves as a columnist for Shots and Deadly Pleasures magazine, pulls your leg in print. Can it be true that on your visit to Sheffield University, you went to your old digs, only to find that Ripley’s daughter was one of the students living there?

LC: Hey, that was 100 percent true. And, yes, give me the odds on that type of coincidence, and I’d even consider entering the lottery. Very weird. And what was weirder was that via Beth Ripley, I got a copy of Mike’s latest novel, Angels Unaware. I read it and thought it was very good, very funny, and even passed a quote to Mike Ripley. So things can go full circle; [they] just need a little fate I guess ...

AK: In your latest book, Jack Reacher has a “fling” with a female character. In light of Reacher’s proven amorous nature, are we ever likely to see any little illegitimate Reacher Juniors crawling about?

LC: That would be a good plot idea, I guess. But I would have to avoid the obvious plot clichés, as [I’d be getting] into territory that other people have covered very well, such as Mike Connelly; when Harry Bosch got a daughter, it changed Bosch’s character. I believe this happened around the same time Michael had a daughter of his own, when he was well established in his own writing. I am much older than Michael. My daughter was already grown up by the time I started writing. So maybe I will go there, or maybe I won’t go there. Who knows?

AK: I just read a tremendous debut novel by some bloke who calls himself Andrew Grant. Would you care to comment?

LC: It’s called Even. It’s probably not as good as Gone Tomorrow, but still a fine book. Andrew Grant is my little brother, and it’s a strange experience for me, as he’s 14 years younger than me and he’s starting writing 13 years after me. So it’s almost like watching a repeat of what I did at the start of my career. He’s a smart guy, it’s a great book, and even if he only gets half the fun out of writing that I’ve got out of it, he’ll be a very lucky guy.

AK: As Mike Ripley mentions regularly in Shots, you are a voracious reader. Can you mention any important recent finds?

LC: Well, I’ve just finished last night a book by Sean Doolittle called Safer. People into the American scene will know his work, but he’s not published in the UK [yet]. He was a cult writer (i.e., with the independent press), but he’s in the big league with Safer, published by one of Random House’s imprints. In the last month that has to be the best book I’ve read, and if you’ve not read Doolittle, you need to, as I am sure he’ll get a UK deal soon. But until then, you can always order online from the U.S.

AK: Thank you for your time, Lee.

LC: Always a pleasure. And I’m impressed that after all these years, you always manage to come up with new questions.

READ MORE: “The Brothers Grant,” by Sarah Weinman (Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind).

Child Is the Man

Author Lee Child (Nothing to Lose)--a favorite of this page--has been elected as the new president of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). He will serve one year in that capacity, succeeding Harlan Coben. The official announcement is here. No comments yet from Mr. Child himself, but we can assume those will follow.

For Male Eyes Only?

I am a big consumer of author Stephen King’s work. But I also appreciate him as a reader, because he lets other readers know about what he enjoys. His 1981 non-fiction work, Danse Macabre, introduced me to many writers who I would never have discovered without his insight. King’s enthusiasm for novels, as well as his own status, supports the industry. And many readers are particularly drawn to the books he chooses to blurb.

Like King, Lee Child does his bit to help younger, less-established wordsmiths. (He even edited and introduces the 2008 collection, Killer Year.) Although he’s often ribbed by Shots columnist Mike Ripley for his voracious reading and reviewing habits, at least Child’s example refutes the myth the real men don’t read--a fact that King points out in his latest Entertainment Weekly column. Writes King:

But, to misquote Mark Twain, reports of the male reader’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Women have chick lit; guys have what my son Joe (as in Joe Hill) calls “manfiction.” And publishers sell it by the ton. Here’s a concept so simple it’s easy to miss: What men want from an Elmore Leonard novel is exactly what women want from a Nora Roberts novel--escape and entertainment. And while it’s true that manfiction can be guilty of objectifying women, chick lit often does the same thing to men. Reading Sandra Brown or Jodi Picoult, I’m sometimes reminded of an old Julie Brown song, “I Like ’Em Big and Stupid.” One memorable couplet goes, '”My father’s out of Harvard, my brother’s out of Yale/Well, the guy I took home last night just got out of jail.”

King goes on to better define “manfiction,” and it appears that Child’s protagonist, the indomitable Jack Reacher, is a particular favorite of his from this subgenre:

The best current manfiction writers? I’d say Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Richard Stark, and Lee Child. Connelly’s Harry Bosch is a dogged cop who takes on the LAPD power structure as often as the bad guys. His current girlfriend, a very liberated woman, is an FBI agent. Crais’ creations--Elvis Cole and Joe Pike--are as tough as the combat boots they used to wear. Richard Stark’s Parker ... is refreshingly amoral, a thief who always gets away with the swag. In the series’ most recent books he has gained a little warmth thanks to Claire, his own longtime companion.

I saved the best for last. Lee Child’s tough but humane Jack Reacher is the coolest continuing series character now on offer. Reacher has also rescued his share of damsels in distress. He wanders the U.S., sometimes hitchhiking, more often riding buses. He dresses in cheap workingman’s duds bought in chain stores, pays cash, and (this is the part I really love) he used to carry only a toothbrush for luggage. He satisfies the most elemental male daydream, which is at bottom quite sweet: to ramble around and help out when help is needed. Possibly with a Beretta, a blowtorch, and a submachine gun.

Grenades optional.

King’s full EW piece can be found here.

My Lee Child Tradition, Part IV

(Editor’s note: Last year, Rap Sheet contributor Ali Karim wrote a trio of posts [see here, here, and here] about his longstanding interest in British thriller writer Lee Child and his annual encounters with the author. We hadn’t banked on a fourth installment of that series, yet with the recent publication in Britain of Child’s 12th Jack Reacher novel, Nothing to Lose, Karim took the chance to dine with and quiz the author once more about his latest projects.)

This last week has been a time of celebration for Lee Child fans in the UK, as for the first time he scored a double No. 1 ranking on the Nielsen Book Charts with both the hardcover Nothing to Lose and the paperback edition of his 2007 Reacher novel, Bad Luck and Trouble (one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2007). I think this is a first for a crime-fiction writer. I have been unable to find any other author in the genre who has accomplished the same feat.

Child’s annual novels starring American former military policeman Jack Reacher are comfort reads for me, thrillers that offer intriguing subtext, rather than only the bone-crunching action that is offered by so many rival works. Nothing to Lose is potentially this author’s most controversial novel, because it shares with us Reacher’s views on both George W. Bush’s Iraq occupation and the so-called war on terror. It also offers a glimpse into how religion at the extremes is the provocation of real danger. I must warn you, though, that if you’re in the United States, you’ll have to wait until the end of May for the American release of this novel.

To synopsize the plot of Nothing to Lose: Reacher is drifting through Colorado when he stumbles upon two small towns named Despair and Hope, both of which will ultimately live up to their names. He soon finds himself run out of Despair by the local constabulary for vagrancy. As any veteran reader of this series could predict, Reacher decides to return to the town, sensing that something is not quite right there. After befriending a shapely cop from Hope named Vaughan, he starts an investigation, only to turn up a dead body found on the side of a road separating the two towns. After that corpse vanishes, Reacher realizes there are larger and darker forces at work around him. All of this leads to a bare-knuckles barroom brawl pitting the 6-foot-5 Reacher against Despair’s sheriff and deputies, a sequence that it is as vivid as it is violent. And amid all of this, Reacher discovers that Despair is very much a company town, dominated by one powerful employer, a giant metal-recycling plant from which trucks roll in and out at all hours. He’s also intrigued by a mysterious plane that flies over Despair at night, questions surrounding a covert army base, and Thurman, an evangelical mayor. Thurman is actually kept offstage until the middle of this book, just when Reacher and Vaughan are getting intimate. But action fans need not fear, as plenty of bad guys get their jaws broken in these pages. What’s most interesting about Nothing to Lose may be Reacher’s musings on the madness that lurks at the heart of the road separating his two fictional Colorado towns. Although this book follows Child’s debut novel, Killing Floor (1997), in terms of plotting, the peep we get into Reacher’s understanding of the Iraq war and his distaste of fanatical religion make for compelling reading. This is what I love about the Jack Reacher novels--the thought-provoking information that peppers the narrative and makes one question apparent reality.

After reading Nothing to Lose, I cleared dates in my diary to take advantage of Lee Child’s publicity tour through Britain, noting that he was returning to the Waterstone’s Deansgate store in Manchester where I first met him back in 2001. I called Patsy Irwin of Transworld Publishing to arrange another interview with Child, and she asked me to join them both for dinner after the Deansgate event.

I arrived at Waterstone’s Deansgate on the appointed night and watched as its events room filled up quickly with Child fans. This engagement was sold out more than a month ago, and many people had to be turned away. I would guess that the room’s capacity exceeded 200 people, and it was a real squeeze. A far cry from when I was one of only 30 people who showed up seven years ago at Deansgate to see Child promoting Echo Burning, his fifth novel.

Child’s events very rarely involve a reading anymore, as it appears that everyone in attendance has read whatever the new book is already. Instead, the author talked this night about the writing life, shared some thought-provoking insights into the world of Hollywood (as the push is on to find a suitable big-screen vehicle for Reacher), and of course answered questions from the audience. As a veteran of Child’s appearances, both in Britain and the States, I am always surprised at his patience and gentlemanly manner when confronted with many of the same questions he’s had to answer before, at venues in different cities around the world. But he’s come to understand the value of being appreciative toward an audience. As he wrote in response to a post on David J. Montgomery’s blog, “I don’t think there is anything I have ever done that hasn’t produced at least a couple of readers. Years later one fan told me she tried my books because I greeted someone politely at a conference, and she thought, he’s a gentleman, I should try his books.”

Following the Waterstone’s engagement, Irwin, Child, and I set off for Manchester’s Gaucho Grill, a swanky restaurant that serves the best and biggest Argentinean steaks in town--perfect for the creator of confirmed carnivore Jack Reacher. To celebrate two of his novels having reached the bestseller lists simultaneously, Child ordered the restaurant’s finest French Champagne. Steak and Champagne on a cold and rainy Manchester night--what a treat, as Child later wrote in his Nothing to Lose tour blog (scroll down to the Day 3 entry).

And while we supped and waited for the chef to grill our steaks, I did a little grilling of Child myself, tape recorder in hand.

Ali Karim: First of all, congratulations on a being a double No. 1 with Nothing to Lose and Bad Luck and Trouble. How does it feel?

Lee Child: Not to bad at all, as they said it takes 12 years to become an overnight success and it’s a fairly rare event, I believe, to have a double No. 1 in the same week. It is especially terrific for the crime and thriller genre, so I am very pleased.

AK: In Nothing to Lose, you offer readers a neo-Western set-up. So, are you a fan of the movies of Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa?

LC: Not really, I’m pretty oblivious to Westerns as a genre. I think the point is that Westerns are rooted to periods of history way back, like the medieval chivalric sagas which I am very familiar with due to my readings in English Literature (King Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.). But you can trace it back even further, as the theme is the basic human story--the idea of the nameless loner with no past and no future who just exists in the present. It is a basic human paradigm which has always been popular.

AK: And you have a great barroom brawl in this new book. Do you find the action scenes fun to write, in contrast to the more serious issues addressed in your subtext?

LC: It’s actually all the same to me when I’m writing it, as it is important for the book that one scene is as important and as well-written as the next. But when you have important issues to explore, you don’t want the hero to be a pious, sanctimonious protagonist, so the violence in the barroom brawl helps flesh him out. This is not some “good-two-shoes,” this is a guy [Jack Reacher], who will do whatever it takes, in whatever arena.

AK: You tackle contemporary themes such as the war on terror and Iraq, but it is subtly peppered within the action of your story. How important are these issues to you?

LC: They were very important that year when I wrote Nothing to Lose. With a book, you tend to write whatever is on your mind, and the Iraq war was very much on my mind, so I’m not surprised it found itself on the page.

AK: Being a fan of Richard Dawkins’ controversial book, The God Delusion, I noticed that you also touch upon the dangers of religious extremism. I have to ask: As you a religious person yourself?

LC: [Laughing] Not in the slightest. But you knew that yourself. I’m with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. … In fact, I’m probably less religious than they are.

AK: So tell us a little about the Killer Year anthology you edited.

LC: Sure, it came out in January of this year. [It involved the work of] 13 writers who banded themselves [together in 2007] as “Killer Year.” They really did all the work, as it was their initiative, but they were looking for a “name” editor to sell it to a publisher, so I was impressed by them and their initiative and said, “Sure,” when they asked me to be the editor. I was rather dreading doing the work, but as it happened, I had no work to do at all; every story that came to me was of an amazing standard. So all I had to do, effectively, was read them, put them in alphabetical order, and … write an introduction. And Laura Lippman was great coming on to write the afterword.

AK: After being drafted in at the last minute for Karin Slaughter’s Like a Charm anthology [published in 2004], you told me that was the last time you’d do it. But I see you participated in the International Thriller Writers’ 2007 project, The Chopin Manuscript. What made you change you mind?

LC: It just goes to show you should never say never, I suppose. It was exactly the same situation, but this time it was Jim Fusilli [asking]. He’s a multi-talented guy; I don’t know if you know Jim, but he’s the rock ’n’ journalist for The Wall Street Journal as well as a fine novelist in his own right [the author of both Hard, Hard City and Tribeca Blues]. So when someone of Jim’s caliber asks you to do something and it fits, you just have to say yes. It was fun to join in the chorus.

AK: I see you’re supporting an autism charity this year. How did this come about, and is autism something that has resonance for you?

LC: Yes, as it happens I think that writing as a profession tends to be over-represented in terms of having some kind of disability in the family. If you have a disabled child, as a for-instance, writing as a career is something that you can manage, as opposed to other types of careers. I am familiar (in second-hand) with what a terrible burden and problem having a disability can be. Autism is one of those scary things that we’re all somewhere on the “gray scale.” Autism is not like you either have got it, or not got it; some of us are at the happy end, while others are at the not-so-happy end of the scale. If there is some way of alleviating it or finding cures, we should all help.

AK: Can you tell us a little about the novel Even, by Andrew Grant? I gather that Grant is your brother.

LC: Yes he’s my baby brother, who’s about 15 years younger than me, and he wrote a novel, Even, and just got a publishing deal, so it will be out about a year from now. It’s very exciting--it’s a good book. It will be fun to have someone else on the scene.

AK: And is it a thriller, or general fiction?

LC: It’s a thriller. It may be a cliché, but the best possible way of describing it would be, “If Ian Fleming were to be writing in 2008 instead of 1953, this is what James Bond might have looked like.”

AK: You are voracious reader. What have been some of your recent discoveries?

LC: Well, I read that you got somewhat excited about Child 44, so I have to say that I did too. I am not sure of anything that has been up to that standard in terms of debut work; of course there’ve been many great books from my established favorites. Going back to Child 44, it really impressed me due to the context in which it is set--the peak of Stalinism in Russia. Which in reality is another way of saying that it is set in some horrible underworld. It is really set in a forest full of ogres, which is the basis of any terrifying novel. The fact that it’s set in the Soviet Union at one of the worst times in its history, is purely historical context. At its heart, emotionally, it is an enchanted-forest tale full of demons ...

AK: As a veteran of book touring, can you tell us some of the amusing things that have happened while you’ve been on your travels?

LC: Well, today we were in Nottingham for a lunchtime signing for around an hour and a half, and almost everyone in the line was called Chris. [Laughing] Not sure why that was so, maybe some regional variation. It was rather spooky. [Laughing]

AK: With bookstores and the publishing industry facing challenges, do you think we have a reading crisis ahead of us? And what can be done to improve literacy?

LC: I don’t want to sound like Pollyanna, but I have a vague feeling that reading is going to come back big-time. The thing that took people away from reading is pretty much saturated now--games, the Internet, DVDs, etc. Reading is like a virus that sleeps gently in the soil, undisturbed, and it will come back in a big way, probably with the younger generation using these new reading devices like the Kindle.

AK: Do you own a Kindle?

LC: I haven’t got a Kindle at this point. And it’s possible I’ll never get one, as, personally, a paperback book is a perfect delivery system. [But the] Kindle is something that might inspire the next generation, or they may just come back to the trusty paperback.

AK: Do you still alternate your time between New York, London, and France?

LC: I’m in New York nearly all the time now, while France is more for holiday/vacation time, and London is really only when I’m here with [my publisher] Transworld. This year I am way, way down on flights--it’s March, and I’ve probably not done more than 20 flights. British Airways has downgraded me from Gold to Silver, as a matter of fact.

AK: I know you’re a smoker. How do you cope with not smoking on all these flights?

LC: I use Nicorette Inhalers, the 15-milligram strength. One of those with a glass of wine is not quite the same as a cigarette, but combined with the canned-air, it does provide a nice sensation. I recommend it.

AK: With 12 books under your belt now, what do have you in store for Reacher No. 13?

LC: Reacher 13 might get me in Salman Rushdie kind of trouble. The sting at the end of the new book is that there is a photograph that is being hunted by a lot of different people. Nobody is sure why this photograph means anything to anybody. The photograph is of Osama bin Laden with an American, so we assume it is the American who wants to hush it up for obvious reasons, but later it emerges it’s Al-Qaeda that wants to hush it up, because in the photograph is something very embarrassing about Osama himself. I haven’t actually worked out what the embarrassing thing is, and if I have enough courage to spell it out.

* * *

The following day, during Lee Child’s appearance at Milton Keynes, I videotaped some of his more interesting comments and have made those available on the Web. Here Child introduces Nothing to Lose and talks about why his new book may court controversy. Here he offers some insights into the Iraq war. Here he talks about the use of profanity in his books. Here he muses on what it feels like to be the creator of Jack Reacher. And finally, here you will find a slideshow of our celebratory meal in Manchester and his presentations in both that city and Milton Keynes.

My Lee Child Tradition, Part III

(This is the final installment of Ali Karim’s tribute to this author. Part I can be found here. Part II is located here.)

I’ve been recounting over the last couple of weeks my discovery of British thriller writer Lee Child and my pleasant encounters with him over the last few years. With the introduction recently of Bad Luck and Trouble, his 11th novel starring American former military policeman Jack Reacher--already cresting bestseller charts in the UK (but not due out in the States until mid-May)--I was hoping to again see Child in action.

However, attendance at his reading/signings has grown substantially over the last decade, making it difficult to locate venues large enough to accommodate his fans. So my old haunt, the Waterstone’s Deansgate bookstore in Manchester, England, was completely out of the running this time around. As a result, I had to drive a bit further to the Waterstone’s (and former Ottakars) in the new town of Milton Keynes.

As is usual for Child, he kept his audience of more than 200 people enthralled as he talked about how he goes about penning the Reacher tales and answered other questions thrown his way. (A slide show from that event can be found here, while a video of Child reading from Bad Luck and Trouble is available here.) And--surprise--after this appearance was finished, the author asked me to join him for dinner. We then retreated to a nearby bar, where, over glasses of cognac, I had the opportunity to fire a few queries of my own at this gentle Englishman.

Ali Karim: So it’s taken you just over a decade to become an overnight success. How does it feel, Lee, to be the number-one thriller writer in the UK?

Lee Child: It’s been a long hard road, but one well worth traveling along. The number-one position is an indication that people like Jack Reacher, which is good to know.

AK: Bad Luck and Trouble is the title of a Johnny Winter song, while Killing Floor, the title of your 1997 novel, is a Jimi Hendrix line. What is it with the blues? And are you a bluesy person when it comes to music?

LC: Yes, totally, I think blues songs are great for book titles, because the blues uses few words and you pick up a sense from them. It gives a little flavor of what the book is going to be about, and the Winter title fitted the new book perfectly.

AK: Numbers and mathematics feature heavily in the plot of Bad Luck. Are you a mathematical person?

LC: Yes, I am in an amateur way. It’s one of the strands that runs throughout all the Jack Reacher books, that he’s good at mental arithmetic. He also likes calculations, and so it was fun to bring this aspect of his character to the fore ... I enjoyed this, as many people think that Reacher is all about rough, tough action--fighting, killing, and so on. [Yet] in the first book, Killing Floor, the vital clue was punctuation; while in the sixth book, Without Fail, the vital clue was whether there was a hyphen or not. And now in the 11th book we have a of mental arithmetic going on, and I found that fun. So it’s not all about violence, it can be about cerebral stuff also.

AK: In Bad Luck, Jack Reacher is in a revenge/retribution mode, especially evident in that book’s brutal climax. Did you find it cathartic to write this book with Reacher so angry?

LC: Yes I did, and the readers like it too, from [their] feedback. The violence and killing is really a metaphor for closure, and that is what people like, because everyone is in a bad situation at some time in their lives, and in real life there is little we can do about it. But in fiction we can see direct action taken, and that is cathartic for the reader.

AK: I’ve been reading your Jack Reacher books for years now. But I have to confess--and maybe this is because I’m getting older--but I felt that Bad Luck and Trouble was the most violent of the series and the most brutal, with people getting tortured, thrown out of helicopters, their necks being broken like twigs ...

LC: Hmm, that’s interesting, as I don’t feel it particularly different from the rest of the series. I think the real issue is the implacable approach: If you mess with Reacher’s friends or you mess with him personally, you’re in big, big trouble. I guess people would find it reassuring to have a friend of that nature, so it’s the inevitable conclusion that appears to be brutal. You know these people are going to die because they made some bad choices in picking on Reacher’s friends, and that’s why you probably perceived it to be particularly brutal.

AK: One thing I noticed in this new Reacher thriller is that the chapters appear to be particularly short. Was that a conscious decision on your part, or simply a byproduct of the book’s plot?

LC: I guess its conscious. In fact, the last two books have been that way--The Hard Way also had shorter chapters, 70 or so; while Bad Luck and Trouble, I think, has 77. Whereas the earlier ones had 15 to 20 or so chapters. It’s a way of re-labeling, because I have always broken up the books into short segments which initially appeared as page breaks within the chapters; whereas now I’m tending to label each segment as a separate chapter. But nothing has changed in terms of structure, it’s just a different way of laying it out on the page. And it’s where the market is, frankly: people need to feel that they are making progress, the gratification. It’s a bit like bite-size candy ... It’s short and punchy, making the reader read another chunk, then read another chunk, and then another chunk. [This structure] also creates a greater narrative drive.

AK: The action in Bad Luck alternates between Las Vegas and California. Did you visit those locations while researching the book?

LC: Not while writing the book. I do my research backwards, as I do travel widely, and if a location makes an impression, I may well use it later. I’ve been to Los Angeles many times, while if you recall, you and I were in Las Vegas together for Bouchercon in 2003, and we had a lot fun. [Laughs]

AK: I’ve heard that Ian Fleming Publications have been onto you about taking up a continuation of the James Bond book series. Have you any regrets in turning down that offer?

LC: Twice over the period of five years they’ve asked me to write the series. [But I have] no regrets, really, because I think it is a thankless task in terms of, first, financial remuneration (as the terms were more favorable to the Ian Fleming estate than to me), and secondly, there is the technical and cultural aspect. I see this as an impossible job, as it’s now 2007--around 50 years on from the world that James Bond first appeared in. The world has changed, and one of the reasons the world has changed is because of James Bond. This country [Britain] has altered its cultural frame of reference because of things like James Bond. So any follow-up 50 years later would be somewhat self-referential, and reading the book would be like watching an ABBA tribute band--i.e., what’s the point?

AK: I noticed that you are one of the judges in the new Daily Mail/Transworld Publishing writing competition. So, as an old pro yourself, do you have any suggestions for budding thriller writers who contemplate submitting work to this contest?

LC: Yes. Firstly, just get it done--finish it. Secondly, do not under any circumstances listen to any advice. And thirdly, write exactly what you want to write; it’s an organic product, not a laundry list of ingredients. Write what you want to write, even if you feel everyone will hate it. That’s the only way of having a living, breathing manuscript that has a chance of winning.

AK: Finally, as we approach “Reacher’s Dozen,” can you share with Rap Sheet readers any news about book 12?

LC: Book 12 will be out a year from now and will be called Play Dirty. It has a lonely rural setting--two towns, Hope and Despair, 12 miles apart in the state of Colorado. Hope is a nice place, Despair is not a nice place, and that’s as much as I can tell you right now.

READ MORE: “Like Dan Brown, but Better,” by David Thomas (The Telegraph); “A Reacher Moment ... or Two,” by Bob Cornwell (Tangled Web).

My Lee Child Tradition, Part II

(The first installment of Ali Karim’s enthusiastic tribute to this author can be found here.)

Last year was pivotal in what’s become my rather unexpected tradition of meeting periodically with British thriller master Lee Child. In 2006, I dined with the author of The Hard Way (and now Bad Luck and Trouble) on a number of occasions. Always to my delight.

Our first encounter of the year came in March during a special party that Child had organized in London during the London Book Fair. It was held in a penthouse overlooking the Thames in Westminster. The guests included his publishing team from the British house Transworld, representatives from his international publishers, his film people, his literary agent, Darley Anderson, his estimable Web site guru, Maggie Griffin, and an array of selected guests, among them Shots editor Mike Stotter and me. Incidentally, the penthouse in which this soirée took place was the same one used as a location for Woody Allen’s excellent 2005 thriller, Match Point.

I composed an article about the event (which celebrated the beginning of Child’s 10th year as a published thriller writer) and took a few pictures to illustrate it (see the finished combination here). A good start to the year.

The next time I saw Child was later that same month, in Bristol, England, during the 2006 Left Coast Crime convention. He was there to support the new International Thriller Writers (ITW) group as it announced its first-ever Thriller Award nominations. LCC was an excellent gathering, and it was great to see so many American writers and readers crossing the broad Atlantic in order to attend. It was especially fun to hang out with members of the ITW board, and I couldn’t help but laugh when we all got together for an evening in the hotel bar. Author M.J. Rose turned at one point to David Morrell and asked him where and when he’d first met spy novelist Gayle Lynds. Morrell replied that it had been during Bouchercon 2003 in Las Vegas, and that “Ali introduced us.” She then swung over to Child and asked him when he’d first met Morrell and Lynds. “Ali introduced us at Bouchercon Las Vegas,” he answered. I ordered another round of drinks and kept laughing. Just call me Mr. Networker. Hey, somebody’s got to get these isolated, bookish writers talking to one another, right?

Speaking of authors making connections … After the ITW nominations were announced, I joined my friend Maggie Griffin for dinner. Not only is she co-owner of New York City’s Partners & Crime bookstore, but she manages author promotions and Web sites for a variety of crime/thriller writers, including Child, Chris Mooney, Steve Hamilton, Lawrence Block, and many others. (I thought I was a busy guy until I met Maggie Griffin--she makes me feel like a slacker!) Following the fine meal, I got to talking with Lee Child and an interesting Irish playwright and then-new novelist, Declan Hughes (whose second and latest private-eye story, The Color of Blood, has just reached American bookstores). We talked about thrillers we had been reading, and those we really should be reading.

One thing you get to know fast about Child, is how much he enjoys helping authors who are only getting started in this game. A kind word here, a suggested title there, and pretty soon somebody else owes him a debt of gratitude. At Bristol, for instance, he handed me an advance reader copy of a then-forthcoming debut work called The Blade Itself, by American writer Marcus Sakey. Child knows that I’m a big-time fan of Dennis Lehane’s books, and he said that as a result, I ought to enjoy The Blade Itself. He was right, and he has gone on from there to promote the forthcoming UK edition of Sakey’s freshman effort with a priceless cover blurb. He’s also been very supportive of the Killer Year company of first-time novelists in 2007, even agreeing to edit their forthcoming anthology of stories. That’s generosity for you.

Months passed before I saw Child again, and this time it was back at the Waterstone’s bookstore in Manchester, during a launch party for The Hard Way, his 10th novel starring former U.S. military policeman Jack Reacher. As anticipated, the affair was oversubscribed, with more than 200 people crammed into the events room. And the store manager told me that his people could’ve sold another 100 tickets, had there been space for everyone. Even so, it was a hot and sweaty evening, and reminded me of the first such gathering at that store on Child’s behalf, in 2001, when only about 20 people showed up to meet the author and ask him to sign their books. What a difference a few bestselling novels in a writer’s career can make.

As usual, Child asked me to join him for dinner following the Waterstone’s function. Now, in all the years we’ve gotten together like this, he had never once permitted me to pass over my credit card for the cost of our meals. And I’d been feeling a bit guilty about that. So I had concocted a plan this time. I knew that Child (like Rap Sheet editor J. Kingston Pierce and me) was a fan of the early novels by Scotsman Alistair MacLean, so I sourced a long-out-of-print copy of Scottish journalist Jack Webster’s biography, Alistair MacLean: A Life, as well as a first-edition hardcover of The Guns of Navarone (1957) in very fine condition--tokens of thanks for the many dinners he’d treated me to over the years. Child seemed very touched, and I felt a bit less guilty.

Finally, in July of that year we met again at the inaugural ThrillerFest (photos here and here) in blistering-hot Phoenix, Arizona. It was a splendid conference, made even more special by the fact that I was asked to be one of the jurors in a mock “trial” of Jack Reacher, based on events in his 2003 novel, Persuader. This event took place on day two, with Child all dressed up as his famous protagonist and being more or less “defended” by Paul Levine, author of the humorous Solomon and Lord legal thrillers. In advance of that trial, Child had pulled me aside and, winking, asked for the names and addresses of anybody who dared to vote Reacher guilty. (I knew he was joking, but it was still a Jack Reacher sort of moment that made me wonder if he’d been spending too much time in the ex-military cop’s company.) South Florida book reviewer and blogger Stacy Alesi, aka BookBitch, recorded the courtroom antics thusly:

Michele Martinez (The Finishing School) was the ferocious prosecutor and her star witness was a law enforcement officer, James O. Born (Escape Clause), with a murky past--something about drunk driving and a bunch of dead nuns? The court was presided over by the honorable M. Diane Vogt, and the bailiff, who spent most of the trial napping center stage, was portrayed by David Dun. Despite the fact that there were two juries, one comprised [sic] of reviewers and press (including your very own BookBitch), and the other of members of the audience, neither could reach a consensus, thus causing a mistrial. It might have had something to do with the fact that despite several objections from Martinez, Lee Child/Jack Reacher flirted shamelessly with the mostly female jurors, or that Paul Levine warned the jury in his closing remarks that if Reacher were found guilty, there would be no more books. More than one sigh was heard at that remark. Rumor had it that if he had been found guilty, there was a contingent of cardboard-gun toting women willing to break him out of jail.

All in good-natured fun.

(Incidentally, Lee Child is scheduled to attend ThrillerFest 2007 in New York City this coming July [click here for details], as well as Bouchercon 2007, to be held in Anchorage, Alaska, in September.)

So, with 10 books under his belt and fans hanging on his every written word, what would Lee Child do next?

(Part I of Ali Karim’s tribute to Lee Child can be found here. Part III is available here.)

My Lee Child Tradition, Part I

Because 2007 marks the start of Lee Child’s second decade as a thriller writer, and because this month brings his 11th Jack Reacher novel, Bad Luck and Trouble, to bookstores in his native Britain (with a U.S. edition due out next month), I thought it time to look back at my association with both character and creator. I’ll be doing so in a series of Rap Sheet posts, this one being merely the first.

* * *

Way back when, before the most recent millennium crossing, I’d read a few reviews of Child’s panoramic American thrillers, all of which starred a former U.S. military policeman, Reacher. My first exposure to one of the actual works came after his second novel, Die Trying (1998), won the UK’s WH Smith Thumping Good Read Award. I did a little digging and discovered that Child’s debut novel, Killing Floor (1997), had captured both a Barry Award from Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine and the Anthony Award for Best Debut Novel. I was still not convinced, though, that I should pick up a Child novel, as my reading table was already brimming with books awaiting my concerted attention.

But on a whim in 2001, I finally bought a paperback edition of his third novel, The Visitor (2000), which was retitled Running Blind in the States. It caught my eye, in large part because Running Blind was also the name of a 1970 book, set in Iceland and written by now long-forgotten British thriller writer Desmond Bagley. During the ’70s, I was a voracious reader of what we now label “Golden Age Thrillers,” produced by such masters as Eric Ambler, Alistair MacLean, Ian Fleming, Hammond Innes, Dornford Yates, Leslie Charteris, John Creasey, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and many others. I was a fan, too, of pulp adventures featuring Doc Savage, Nick Carter, The Shadow, and The Spider. (Only later did I learn that writers I respect, such as Gayle Lynds, once penned Nick Carter books.)

To my surprise, I was captivated by Child’s The Visitor, and was propelled back to my local bookstore to purchase its three predecessors. I was bang up to date. But the following month brought out yet another Reacher adventure, Echo Burning, which I read with alacrity. I found myself attracted by three aspects of Child’s writing. First off, his books were flat-out fine reads. In addition, they harked back to that Golden Age of thriller-writing, and--most important of all--they offered a hidden depth, a concealed feeling for humanity. Those novels were packaged as gung-ho action adventures, reinforcing what seemed like a gun-totting right-wing agenda; but in reality, they were far from that, as they contained a complex intellectual dimension behind their truly exciting plots.

I soon went on to compose an essay about all of this, mostly in answer to some dimwit who had posted a comment in the forum of Lee Child’s Web site after the publication of his 2004 novel, The Enemy. That respondent insisted it would be most unlikely for a white U.S. soldier such as Jack Reacher to have slept (in The Enemy) with a black female GI. Being a man of color myself, this rather astounding degree of naïveté made me chuckle. My essay, published in the e-zine Shots, read in part:

A serious aspect that I discussed with Lee Child was if he were concerned about the political liberalism that his work is peppered with. His books may be wrapped up in the mould of a right-wing action tale (as some of his readers, I conjectured, probably had right-wing leanings). In The Enemy we have a military tale which features Reacher’s partner being a black American lieutenant as well as the book tackling issues such as homosexuality in the U.S. army. Strong stuff. Lee considered that these issues made his work more interesting, as well as making people question their own belief and value systems, because while captivated by a bruiser type hero such as Reacher, we find Reacher standing up to injustice in all its shapes and forms. One time that [Child] did have problems was with readers writing to him about Echo Burning, which has a sub-plot featuring a group of illegal immigrants in Texas caught up in real injustice. This tale provoked a strong reaction in some of his readers, who could not get their heads around why Reacher would help illegal immigrants; when in reality the question was, why wouldn’t Reacher help these people who got themselves caught up in trouble not of their doing? This is one aspect of Lee Child’s work that elevates him above the standard action-genre. His work is peppered with subtle social commentary and he’s not afraid to confront the issues that exist in the real world, even if it is in the guise of a thriller.

I called my Shots essay “David Beckham Washed My Car,” the joke being that David Beckham, the famous white British footballer, had recently been voted as one of the most popular black men in Great Britain--and by a quirk of fate, had actually washed Lee Child’s car when he was still a young comer in the sport.

As ever, though, I digress ...

In the spring of 2001, having enjoyed Child’s literary output, I finally had a chance to meet the man in person. Armed with a hardcover copy of Echo Burning, I went to a signing at Manchester, England’s Waterstone’s Deansgate bookstore. It was a cozy affair with only about 20 people having come to hear him talk. And talk he did, in an erudite and worldly wise fashion that demonstrated his being very, very well read. Child signed my book, and someone in the crowd took a photograph of me in my Leonard Cohen-inspired Famous Blue Raincoat. (I’m still amused by the fact that Child’s longtime Webmaster, the wonderful Maggie Griffin, keeps that photo up on the Lee Child Web site. Notice how my hair had only started turning gray at the turn of the century.)

The following year, I met Child again, this time reading his latest Reacher outing, Without Fail, a book that had been shortlisted for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s inaugural Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and had also found a place on January Magazine’s favorite books of 2002 list. (Contributing editor and now Rap Sheet blogger Kevin Burton Smith described Without Fail as a “men’s adventure book for men and women who can read with their mouths closed and their minds [and hearts] open--smart, literate and just good old-fashioned thrilling.”) Again, our encounter came at the Manchester Waterstone’s, but this time there were between 35 and 40 people in attendance. Unfortunately, I was compelled to leave right after having my book signed, as I had an early meeting on the other side of the country the following day.

It was sheer serendipity that my business gathering was in Norwich, where Lee Child just happened to be speaking later the next day. As a consequence, we found time to get together for the first of what have now been many dinners. I used the meal to schedule a second interview with him for Shots, in which I would remark:

Writing about heroes is risky. Lee takes risk in his stride. What could have ended up as disposable pulp, is now heralded as one of the most fashionable crime series around today. It appeals on many levels, but then again so does crime.

I have often discussed my own love of Alistair MacLean’s earlier works with Lee, especially the stories that the Scottish/American writer told before his move from Switzerland to California; before his addiction to alcohol dominated his life so much so, that the stories after Circus [1975] began to unravel. This revealed a reliance on formulaic plots and less on the edgy heroes he once so skillfully carved. ‘Men on a Mission’ is what [American film director] Quentin Tarantino referred to in his précis of the MacLean formula. I can report with relief that no such issues cloud Lee’s work. In fact, he has chiseled many diverse novels, from the violent chase thriller Die Trying, through the classical mystery of Tripwire to the surreal, serial-killer mystery The Visitor and then back to the Neo-western roots found in his debut, Killing Floor, with the blistering Echo Burning. In some respects, Lee Child is more akin to Ian Fleming, another British writer who wrote as an outsider from his beloved Goldeneye retreat [in Jamaica], setting the action in alien contrast to the ‘safe’ British backdrop of his home.

The vista for Jack Reacher now becomes broadened with a panoramic grassy knoll conspiracy mystery, Without Fail. Each novel is like a ‘stand-alone’ adventure pitting Reacher against the alien terrain [America] that is his country of birth, but not that of his creator, and for that reason, the stories become hugely enriched. This enrichment is akin to Patricia Highsmith’s love of Europe and all its contradictions and amorality that played well with her deliciously warped Tom Ripley. European amorality even seduced Thomas Harris out of ‘retirement’ to wander to Florence for Hannibal Lecter’s return to his true home. The contrast is that Jack Reacher has to survive the amorality that swirls wherever he travels.

There is something mysterious about crossing the Atlantic Ocean that seems to bring out the unusual in accomplished crime writers, and Lee Child is secure in that company.

In 2003, following the publication of Child’s seventh novel, Persuader, and after yet one more visit by the author to that Waterstone’s in Manchester (to be greeted this time by around 100 people in the audience), I traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada, to attend Bouchercon. Lee Child was there, too, as were David Morrell and Gayle Lynds. We spent a wonderful time, accompanied by lots of beer drinking. The seeds of the International Thriller Writers organization were sown that weekend (though it would take the following Bouchercon, in Canada, to settle matters for the ITW.) But one of the most memorable events of that Vegas excursion, at least for me, was my dinner with Lee Child and the lengthy, detailed interview I did with him for January Magazine. I learned a great deal during that exchange, including the genesis of Reacher’s name:

Is it true that your wife, Jane, came up with the name “Reacher” while she was out shopping?

She was naturally interested in how I was going to replace my monthly paycheck, and I told her I was going to be a novelist. She took it very well, really. Killing Floor, that first book, was a first-person narrative, and as it happened the main character didn’t need to be named until somebody interrogated him, about 20 or so pages in. So I had started the book and I hadn’t come up with a name I liked. We went out shopping to the supermarket and--like you probably, Ali, because you’re tall, too--every time I’m in a supermarket, a little old lady comes up to me and says, “You're a nice tall chap, could you reach me that can?” So Jane said, “Hey, if this writing thing doesn’t pan out, you could always be a reacher in a supermarket.” I thought, Reacher--good name.

2004 brought the publication of The Enemy, which I mentioned before, and which was a prequel of sorts to the Reacher series. That novel went on to win three prestigious commendations: the Nero Wolfe Award, the Barry Award for Best Novel of the Year, and--most conveniently--the “first annual” Jack Reacher Award, created by the editors of Crimespree Magazine, who are confirmed fans of this British-born author.

By the next year, when Child made his traditional promo tour through the UK, this time touting One Shot, it had become a problem finding bookstores big enough to accommodate the increasing numbers of readers wanting to meet this writer and have their books autographed. The Waterstone’s Deansgate store in Manchester, which four years before had drawn only 20 people to hear Lee Child speak, this time attracted 200, its total capacity, with many more people having to be turned away.

No longer was Lee Child a secret among thriller connoisseurs. He had definitely hit the big time.

(Part II of Ali Karim’s tribute to Lee Child can be found here. Part III is available here.)