The Jack Reacher Industrial Complex

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 Ames
  Not 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…

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.