Lee Child's 'Jack Reacher' books

Back on 17th September 2024, in an Northamptonshire church - it was Woodnewton, the location of another post about Coco the Clown - I came across a cluster of pre-owned paperbacks selling at 50p each. Among them, two of Lee Child's 'Jack Reacher' thrillers, Tripwire and Echo Burning - the third and fifth in the Reacher canon of twenty-five books, written from 1997 to 2019. That's twenty-four full-length novels and a collection of short stories. The series has continued, but in the hands of Lee Child's brother: not quite the same thing. I am sure that the latest books are just as exciting, but surely something would be missing, and I've neither bought them nor read them. This post is about the Reacher books written up to 2019.

Prior to investing a quid in the two Woodnewton books, I'd heard about the Reacher books many times from different people. It was clear that they were a good read, and I enjoy adventure thrillers. But I gathered that Reacher himself was a hulking muscle-man, and that didn't appeal. 

Then I saw the 2012 film (based on the book One Shot) starring Tom Cruise in the Reacher role. It's widely thought that he was miscast, being short when Reacher is a giant, so that Cruise was physically wrong for the part. Even so, I enjoyed the film, finding the plot intriguing, and seeing at any rate that the character of Jack Reacher had depth. So the film put the notion of trying the books in my mind, and then it was just a question of time before I started buying them.

The very next day, 18th September 2024, I spotted Reacher book number one, Killing Floor in another church at Manton (in Rutland):

Another low-cost purchase. More early Reacher books followed - I was trying to read them in their proper order, and was by now hooked. But it would be expensive to buy them new. So I was raiding charity shops, and initially had some success. Soon however it became clear that only some of the books would ever be found in charity shops, and that I'd have to stump up and pay full price for most of them. I scorned purchasing from Amazon: I'm not going to be guilty of supporting that bloated enterprise if I can help it. Waterstones become my online source. Month by month I added to my Reacher collection, as this series of photos taken in my study from November 2024 to November 2025 shows. Gradually my previous crime/thriller collections took a back seat:

Blue Moon was the last book I bought. By then, it was difficult to see what new situation the man could get into; and although he was still fit and strong, and living the itinerant life he loved, he was well into his forties and I didn't want to see him in decline. In one book he told another character that he would probably die alone and unheeded in a motel room, and I felt certain that this was indeed going to be his fate. Better to leave him when he was still intact and a force to be reckoned with.

So what was the fascination of Jack Reacher for me? 

I think it was partly his personal nature, and partly the way Lee Child rounded him out with a interesting backstory. His father was American, his mother French. His father was a Marine, posted all over the world, and Jack Reacher and his brother Joe had the experience of being constantly uprooted when young. As boys, both were clever, personable, principled, and well able to stick up for themselves. They grew into men with a strong sense of purpose. Both had brains. Joe gravitated to intelligence work. Jack, more the man of action, did not want to be a Marine like his father, but found it natural to join the US Army (the family business, he felt) as a military policeman, rising to Major. His mental and physical skills suited him to the job: he was very good at it, and was widely respected. So when the Army began to slim down in the later 1990s and had no ongoing role for him, he felt discarded. Released from serving his country, he decided that he would roam America and gradually see it all. It would take a lifetime. He made sure that he ate well and kept fit. Never having owned anything that the Army hadn't kitted him out with, he carried just a toothbrush, a bank card and a roll of banknotes. He bought a fresh outfit of clothes every three days. No phone. No address. Once out of sight, he was untraceable. That's how he liked it. Impossible to do for long in this country, but feasible in the USA.

I should mention that Reacher, while a man with principles and standards, had no scruple about using lethal force against the bad people he inevitably encountered. He was an expert shot, invincible in a fight, and although he did occasionally get hurt, he always prevailed in the end. Although a loner, he was (while around) a staunch friend, and a sensitive lover, and possessed a wry sense of humour. He was also a mathematical savant, and carried in his head all kinds of encyclopaedic detail. A hint of autism perhaps.

Each book deals with an episode he got caught up in. Sometime it was just chance. Sometimes he just knowingly walked into a situation. Other times he worked with former colleagues. The overriding theme of the books is righting wrongs, often involving some kind of rescue, in situations that use Reacher's intelligence, his physical strength and skills, and his endurance. The reader may flinch at what he has to do to win out, but very time he comes through, then hits the road again.

He is no vigilante, but has a powerful sense of justice. Each book is thrilling and ends satisfactorily. Yet each is different, and I found that many were very memorable. Some - not all - contain scenes that I personally found gruesome or nightmarish. But although shocked that such things can happen, it won't put me off re-reading all my Jack Reacher books at some point soon. 

Was all the stuff Lee Child wrote on guns, Army life, wounds and successful ways to fight completely authentic? Well, I felt that the author had taken great pains to get it right. It certainly impressed me. I also felt that if ever I were caught up in - say - a knife fight, what I read in these books might stand me in good stead.  

Did I like Reacher as a character? On the whole yes. He would of course be a great companion in a dangerous situation. But after the crisis, he'd soon be gone. He wouldn't stick around. There would be no commitment. So he couldn't become a long-term friend. I felt rather sorry for the couple of women who were particularly drawn to him, but couldn't make anything permanent of it. 

I am like him in that respect. I don't want a relationship. I haven't wanted one since 2009. And that's not going change. 

I couldn't however go through life without a home, without possessions, without an archive of photos, and without the means to keep in touch with the people in my life. My personal motto is Stay alive, stay free - a sentiment Reacher might approve of - but I still need a base, a resting-place. I wouldn't like to die in an anonymous hotel room.

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Nucleus at Wick: fine architecture and fish girls

It's last May again, hence the sunny weather! This time, my visit to the building where they keep the Caithness county archives. 

Caithness is the northernmost part of mainland Scotland, partly a land of rolling green fields very suitable for grazing, partly a wilderness of peat bog and other kinds of wetland. It has only two towns of any size: Thurso and Wick. There are several smaller places, villages really, like Halkirk and Lybster, but the real action, such as it is, is at Thurso and Wick. They are both 'planned towns' with a grid layout in their older parts. Both are nowadays prime stopover places on the North Coast 500 tourist route. Thurso has major harbour facilities at nearby Scrabster, where the ferry for Orkney departs from. Wick also has major harbour facilities, but they are actually part of the town, not two miles distant, and indeed the harbour is central to its daily life - its very soul. Wick has, to my mind, the better architecture, and rather more character. But Thurso is sunnier, has a fine park, and has the beach that Wick lacks. 

Administratively Wick is the more important place, possessing for instance the law courts, and the general hospital. Both towns are served by rail, each with stations on the Far North Line out of Inverness, Wick's station being the terminus. Wick also has the airport. Neither town has much in the way of shops beyond the usual ones found anywhere, although Wick has a particularly good Tesco. Thurso's Tesco isn't a patch on it. 

If ever I came to live in Caithness, neither town would completely satisfy all my day-to-day needs, but taken together they do, and, having thought about it, I would probably plump for a nice bungalow in Halkirk, roughly midway between them. Halkirk has the air of a somewhat comfortable and select little suburb, and I suspect it was, and remains, a locality of choice for incoming engineering executives and managers. If ever I sold up in Sussex and decided to transplant myself there, I could afford (given Sussex house values) to buy almost any property on offer, and still have enough left over to fly south from Wick airport to whenever I wanted to. I don't think I will ever uproot myself from Sussex, but if requiring a bolthole, Caithness is certainly a possible destination, and possibly more practical than living on Orkney. On the other hand - being of Scandinavian heritage - I might prefer the Norse-orientated cultural life on Orkney to the Gaelic tradition in Caithness, although both share a Pictish history. This part of present-day Scotland was for centuries the hub of the northern seafaring world, with plenty of evidence of it still to be seen.

One thing I haven't mentioned so far is Dounreay, meaning the nuclear power station that was built on the coast there, and its transformative effect on Caithness as a whole, and Thurso in particular. Many of the newer buildings and facilities in Caithness were connected with Dounreay, and it spawned all kinds of supporting businesses, from hotels to a factory in Halkirk that made the disposable plastic suits worn by workers in the reactor. The needs of the power station led to better roads, the improved A9 for instance. Its construction, operation, and even its decommissioning meant well-paid jobs. Economically it was a Very Good Thing. My personal stance on nuclear power stations is that they are necessary, and given proper planning, construction and management the radiation risk can be controlled and need not be dangerous. 

I am in fact interested in these things, and wanted to learn more. One can no longer visit Dounreay and have a conducted tour, but the Nucleus building at Wick, adjacent to the airport, had the information I wanted. So on 16th May last year, I parked Sophie in the spacious car part for visitors, and approached the archive building. 

As ever, click on the pictures to see the detail.

It all looked quite new, and very modern in concept. Ahead of me was a linear construction, apparently a long tall fence. Where was the expected building? Was it underground?

As you walked closer, a series of pointy uprights gave you the gist of Caithness's modern history, decade by decade.

By now the true nature of the construction was clear. There was a proper building; it was enclosed by a long, high and very spectacular wall of steel slats, forming a sheltered triangular courtyard with a water feature. I thought that wall, and that courtyard, were stunning. It was very exciting architecture.

Wow. Fancy working here! Or coming to look up something. Or just to see whatever exhibition they were putting on. I imagined, for example, parties of noisy schoolchildren on a local outing being corralled in that enclosure. 

Let's go in.

This is not how most of Wick looks! The town consists of very solid tall stone buildings in the centre and south of the harbour, with mid-twentieth century accretions elsewhere. Not this sort of thing. 

I went in, and had a very friendly reception. They were delighted that somebody from faraway Sussex had come to visit, and took me very seriously. I had to fill in a form, put my bag and other things away in a locker - though I could retain my phone - and I was supplied with a Visitor badge to hang around my neck.

Then I followed the corridor that led to the archive study room. On the way I admired the use of glass and colour, and the views of another internal courtyard, a veritable suntrap on that day. The design had won a prestigious award.

Ah, the holy of holies. With every modern facility for research. I was given one of those desks. What did I wish to look at? The history and social impact of Dounreay nuclear power station, please. Well, they had two well-illustrated books considered to be the best introduction to that topic. I could take pictures of their contents to my heart's content. That seemed to be exactly what I wanted.

And so for the next hour or so I worked my way through these books, using my phone to copy pages of interest. What did I find? That may be the subject of an upcoming post. After finishing, I thanked the staff, collected my stuff from the locker, surrendered my Visitor badge, and drove away back to Dunnet Bay where my caravan was pitched. 

On the way out of Nucleus, I did have a quick look at their latest exhibition. It was about the Herring Girls, those Scottish girls and older women who, engaged together as a mobile 'crew', gutted caught fish on quaysides during the later nineteenth century and early twentieth century, mainly at Scottish ports, although they might seek work as far south as Great Yarmouth. It looked like a hard life at the best of times, and times were not always good. It was a livelihood that eventually vanished with the overfished herring.

Plenty of room for those noisy school parties!

Did they suffer from raw hands? Or lose fingers? Or smell of fish? (Questions little Lucy would have asked teacher) 

Gutting the herring, ready for salting and being put in those barrels. It was skilled work; a Herring Girl could slit and eviscerate a fish in seconds, and do it all day long.

The exhibition looked more closely at a few individuals and their lives. I didn't envy them.

The letters that were written to find work for the season each year, and the wages books kept.

There was a lot of information about the working lives of these girls, and what happened to their industry.

Conditions got worse. The girls rebelled.

It leaves you with the impression that not only the herring were exploited. Whatever you might say about contemporary workplace contracts and prospects, the girls had to put up with worse, even though it was a sociable way of life that many welcomed, and a way of escaping the drudgery and poverty of crofting. Although employment law was very thin, there were of course limits on how far a hiring company could go: Scottish and English notions of decency and respectability curbed the excesses that might occur in other parts of the world. In any case, these were feisty women who could stand up for themselves. Good for them, I say.

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