The Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child are a phenomenon. They shoot up the bestseller charts like a rat up a drainpipe as soon as they’re released – I always have them on preorder. So what the hell makes them tick?
Most critics agree that their stellar success is largely down to the highly charismatic hero, Jack Reacher. It’s certainly difficult to imagine a more mouth-watering premise for a character – a retired US military policeman who wanders the world, applying his own rough justice, armed only with a toothbrush. He personifies the kind of freedom and integrity that most of us aspire to, and readers love to spend 400 pages in his company.
Unsurprisingly, these mega-successful thrillers have spawned an army of excellent imitators: Mark Dawson’s John Milton novels and Stephen Leather’s Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd series are personal favourites of mine. They’ve also found their way to the silver screen – unfortunately with Tom Cruise hopelessly miscast as the giant ex-soldier.
I’ve read most of the Reacher novels over the years, but recently I decided to go back to the very first in the series, Killing Floor, to try and identify some of the key success factors. I surprised myself by finding a whole load of techniques that I hadn’t noticed the first time I read it – Lee Child really does know how to make you turn the pages. I’ll be sharing the fruits of my analysis in a forthcoming book, but here’s a few insights to be going on with.
1) The chapters are long. It’s a myth that short chapters make popular books. Really the narrative just moves along in a continuous flow with each chapter picking up where the last left off.
2) Reacher is an anti-hero. That means his values hover somewhere between the sadistic villains and the whiter-than-white cops who often appear alongside him. That instability and uncertainty is fascinating because he is pulled back and forth between good and evil – like the rest of us.
3) Reacher treats women with respect. Most readers of thriller fiction are women.