So this big guy walks into a bar…
Now, it’s no secret I’m as big a fan of Lee Child’s best-selling, coffee-slurping palooka Jack Reacher, as the next jasper, and I’m happy for his success — Lee’s a great guy. He’s generous to a fault, and kind to other writers and fellow human beings and lowly mystery nerds like me. I’ve had the good fortune to interview him, and have run into him a number of times. I wish him well.
Of course, everyone should have friends, and I don’t begrudge Reacher making new friends occasionally — it can be fun seeing the big lug stray from his comfort zone. Despite the rumours, Reacher can indeed play well with others, as evidenced in these short stories co-written by Child:
- “Good and Valuable Consideration” (2014, FaceOff)
Co-written with Joseph Finder, featuring Finder’s ex-Special Forces bad ass turned “corporate intelligence specialist” Nick Heller. - “Faking a Murderer” (2017, Matchup)
Co-written with Kathy Reichs, featuring Montreal forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. - “Cleaning the Gold” (May 2019, audio/digital) | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
Co-written with Karin Slaughter, featuring her Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Will Trent.
For fans, these are enjoyable little forays, and I don’t think Reacher’s Creatures mind much about Child and Reacher’s occasional hook-ups with other authors and their characters.
Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery
And while it might seem a little cringey at first, there are a few series that pretty much prove the adage. Each author has eventually staked out their own turf, and each has also been blurbed by Child.
- The Jim Grant Thrillers
By Colin Campbell
A “friend” of Lee Child, who blurbed the first book, calling it “very real, very good,” Campbell’s Jim Grant at least initially was essentially a clone of Reacher’s, a former British cop wandering the U.S. of A., a freelance trouble-magnet with no fixed address. Campbell at least gets extra points for cheekiness — Jim Grant is Lee Child’s real name. - The Charlie Fox Series
By Zoë Sharp
This “personal protection expert” is pretty much a female version of Reacher: ex-military (she was kicked out of the army for reasons she’d rather not go into), gets around, and doesn’t seem to have to go looking very hard for trouble — it seems to find her easily enough.
These are the Houses that Jack Built
But there’s a whole series by other writers that have sprung up in Reacher’s wake that pretty much owe their entire raison d’etre to the man with the folding toothbrush. They all function more-or-less within the Reacherverse (and apparently with Child’s approval), but they remind me of nothing so much as those tiny parasites that attach themselves to a shark’s skin, and go along for the ride. Sure, they serve a purpose (the wheel of life, etc.), but you have to wonder… why?
- The Jack Reacher Cases
By Dan Ames
Lauren Pauling, a former FBI agent turned private eye, keeps crossing paths with Reacher, but never quite hooking up. Always the bridesmaid? - Jack Reacher’s Special Investigators Series
By Dan AmesNot content with penning The Jack Reacher Cases (above), the suspiciously prolific coattail rider Ames double dips with this series. Supposedly, while traveling across the USA armed only with a bankcard and a toothbrush, Reacher somehow finds the time to occasionally hook up with on his old Army buddies, “a group of the smartest, toughest and most fearless individuals in the Army’s 110th.” But mostly they’re reunited and on their own, fighting the good fight. And of course it’s once again “set in the Reacher universe by permission of Lee Child.” Really, Lee?
- The Joe Reacher Series
By Dan Ames
Not content with penning two other spin-off series, the serial offender Ames goes for the hat trick with a news series, starring not Jack but Joe Reacher, Jack’s federal investigator brother. Again, with Child’s blessing. Next up from Ames? Mrs. Reacher’s Guide to French Cooking? - The Frances Neagly Series
By Dan Ames
A spin-off from Child’s books and his own Jack Reacher’s Special Investigators series (see above), Ames (whoever or whatever he/she/it is) clocks in with yet another Reacher-adjacent series, this time featuring Frances Neagly, Reacher’s former comrade-in-arms in the MPs, now a private detective. He even launched the series months before the Amazon Prime show made its debut. - The Karla Dixon Series
Yet another former Army Special Investigator who served under Jack Reacher in the 110th, Karla is a freelance forensic financial investigator, who follows the money wherever it leads. - The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series
By Diane Capri
FBI Special Agents Kim Otto and Carlos Gaspar have a special, off-the-books assignment: find Reacher. But somehow, over more than almost twenty novels, they always seem to just miss him, and find themselves cleaning up the messes he leaves behind. -
The Reacher Experiment Series
By Jude Hardin
Set in the authorized Jack Reacher universe, the series meanders into sci-fi territory as it follows Rock Wahlman, a 40-something retired Navy veteran who discovers he is an exact genetic copy of Jack Reacher, produced from a blood specimen drawn over a hundred years earlier, and who is now being hunted by people who want to keep the experiment a secret. - The Reacher Code: Timestream Series
By Jude Hardin
Jude Hardin’s obvious sequel to his Reacher Experiment series finds Rock Wahlman sent back in time to protect the real Jack Reacher, while trying to avoid a rogue group of time-traveling criminals determined to alter the past in an effort to make themselves rich. Sure…
This raises the question of whether Child/Reacher are the heirs of the old “men’s adventure” series. Mack Bolan was always spinning off like this.
Or Bulldog Drummond and Nick Carter. Maybe in fifty years, Jack Reacher (under the house name of “Lee Child”) will be a super-spy or maybe a time-traveling barbarian with a talking cat.
Amazon has done some great things for the genre — providing a venue for shorts and reviving the novella to promote established but perhaps unfamiliar authors, offering cheap collections of lesser-known PI and noir stories and novels, giving those with limited space options or book budgets a lower-cost digital alternative. But self-publishing and resulting hack piggybacking on popular series and authors (King and Patterson even have imitators tweaking their names to hook gullible readers) has cheapened the crime genre to a point where I simply threw up my hands at the idea of trying to get anything published. The house name alias was a publisher decision. These Reacher lampreys and their ilk (thought I’d get drawing room on you) simply annoy, and cheat potentially promising new authors out of a slot by filling the digital shelves with an impossible supply of crap.
Amen.
Oi. Como sempre, estou atrasada pra festa… (estou escrevendo em português, pois sou brasileira e meu inglês é bem fraco, mas depois vou passar pelo tradudor do Google e copio aqui embaixo a tradução que espero seja próxima do que estou escrevendo na minha lingagem materna (apesar de como dizemos por aqui, tradutor = traidor). Enfim, eu disse que estou atrasada pra festa, uma frase jocosa em Português, porque este seu post tem uns seis anos e só agora eu li. Eu o achei quando procurava entender como começaram essas franquias do Jack Reacher, intrigada com a quantidade de livros que me apareceram com o personagem quando estava procurando outra coisa… Pois tudo começou assim: eu estava lendo a série da Ann Voss e do J A Konrath Codinome Chandler e como gostei bastante, fui procurar outros livros dos autores e vi que eles colaboram com mais outros autores, o que me levou a pesquisar esses novos autores e então cheguei até o Jude Hardin, que tem a “permissão” do Lee Child pra escrever novas histórias do Reacher (inclusive uma série em que ele é clonado, viaja no tempo e coisas assim…) e então descobri que outros autores também têm essa permissão e fiquei com uma enorme interrogação na minha cabeça. Como é isso? O Lee Child ganha royalties por cada livro que navega na fama do Jack Reacher original? Se alguém souber, me conta… um abraço das terras brasileiras em que em pleno inverno estamos com 29 graus celsius (creio que seriam uns 85 graus em farenheit.)
Hi. As always, I’m late to the party… (I’m writing in Portuguese because I’m Brazilian and my English is quite weak, but later I’ll run it through Google Translate and post it here, hoping it’s close to what I’m writing in my native language (although, as we say here, translator = traitor). Anyway, I said I’m late to the party, because this post is about six years old and I’ve only just read it now. I found it when I was trying to understand how these Jack Reacher franchises started, intrigued by the number of books featuring the character that appeared when I was looking for something else… Well, it all started like this: I was reading the series by Ann Voss and J.A. Konrath, Codename Chandler, and since I liked it a lot, I looked for other books by the authors and saw that they collaborate with other authors, which led me to research these new authors and then I came across Jude Hardin, who has Lee Child’s “permission” to write new Reacher stories (including a series where he is cloned, travels through time and other things like that…) and then I discovered that other authors also have this permission, and I was left with a huge question mark in my head. How does that work? Does Lee Child earn royalties for each book that rides on the fame of the original Jack Reacher? If anyone knows, please tell me… a hug from the Brazilian lands where, in the middle of winter, we’re experiencing 29 degrees Celsius (I believe that would be around 85 degrees Fahrenheit for you).