I have been snaffling up the new series, Reacher, based on the hugely popular Jack Reacher novels of UK-born author Lee Child. They have become classics, as classic as the Travis McGee novels of John D Macdonald. (McGee lives in a boat, in Fort Lauderdale, and those novels are set in the 60s. Wonderful stuff.)
Anyway, a new Amazon Prime series is out. Already, I detect a certain discomfort among some highfalutin types that the main character, played by Alan Ritchson, lacks “depth”. Ah, not enough politics, or angst, or regret at wasting the bad guys. Plus he seems quite a draw for the ladies. In other words, Reacher is solid, heterosexual, no-messing entertainment like a traditional Western, and you can just imagine how well that goes down in certain quarters.
Anyway, I left this comment on a Facebook thread:
I like the fact that the main character is not constantly haunted and full of angst (sure, we get a few flashbacks to when he was an Army brat and fought local kids, but that is not overdone). I like the fact that he looks as he was written by Child; I like his touches of wry humour, his obvious sense of honour, his stoicism and willingness to do the right thing, to be protective of vulnerable people. He does not subvert the essential heroism of the character by being snide, or making tongue-in-cheek quips, or drop political points. It is a breath of fresh air in the current environment.
Comforting? Maybe. Remember that art, done right, is about enhancing life, of showing how life could be, not merely reflect it. Reacher is a sort of rugged hero, and we need them.
Quite right.
And miles better than Tom Cruise.
Better than the movies with Tom?
I’m leary of any of the new shows, but it sounds as if the same old tripe that Hollywood usually pushes isn’t included. I’ll guess I’ll give it a try.
“In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.
The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor — by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.
He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks — that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.
The story is the man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder
Sounds good. Don’t know the novels, but will gladly give it a try. Loved “Justified” for more a less similar reasons.
Reacher is the best new series that I’ve watched for a long time. Alan Ritchson make a good job of the character up to now and despite the usual box-ticking support characters, it’s not as woke as I feared it might be. Let’s hope Amazon have realised that stories about white men, written by white men, for white men are what the majority of the paying audience want to watch.
I was a little perturbed by the body count. It isn’t a good idea to be a peripheral character in this series, especially if you are a baddie.
Will watch it now. Loved the Reacher books until the last couple before Lee Child stepped aside and the new writer seemed to think the wonderful phrase ‘Reacher said nothing’ needed to be replaced with more of today’s introspective waffle. Incidentally, I do wonder if Mr Cruise will make any more of the Reacher movies after the TV show; one thing that made me chuckle watching them was all the support actors were Cruise’s height as far as I could see, but the novels had our Jack so much bigger than most people he encountered.
As for ‘Justified,’ that too was breath of fresh air, though being created initially by Elmore Leonard’s short stories that shouldn’t have been a surprise.
@NickM: I was once told all detective stories are the search for the restoration of truth, and a good cop/private eye hero is the right man to do it.
Argh.
The Reacher books are good – some even great. Still, John D is in no danger of losing his spot. 😉
Cruise made good movies based on Reacher, but this new guy – well, he IS Reacher as I always saw him. Heck, even Lee Child said that the recasting was good, if only because Reacher needs to be a giant, and Cruise isn’t.
They mean just like in the books?
I enjoyed the Reacher novels I read for what they are but what they are are airport paperbacks. Lee Childs isn’t trying to be LeCarre.
I do note that I have never met a liberal wine-and-cat lady who liked the Reacher books. Patriarchy embodied, I’d guess.
It’s worth it, definitely- they’ve lucked into some perfect casting (though I suspect some casting of scrawnier co-stars, as I don’t remember him being quite that imposing in ‘Titans’).
The interplay between the protagonist and his friends/enemies is engaging and the fight scenes appropriately brutal.
Season 2 better deliver on the promise of this first one!
I like the new Reacher series but found the only Reacher novel I attempted to be prolix, ridiculous, fantasy. My disbelief crashed to floor after 20 pages.
Agammanon – I am glad that Lee Childs is not trying to be “another LeCarrie” – as “John LeCarre” is a Collectivist – who believes the “anti capitalist” propaganda of the Marxists he was once employed to fight (I hope the intelligence services are not filled with such people – but I rather fear that they are, at least in the United States).
Good post Johnathan Pearce. I am glad that not everything is bad in the world.
The Reacher series has a spin off series by Diane Capri:
https://dianecapri.com/books/hunt-jack-reacher-series/
She has a FBI female agent following Reacher through his various adventures sometime after they occur. For reasons not actually given, the FBI is trying to find him.
The spin offs are almost as good as the originals.
@rhoda. The body count is part of the attavistic charm. Bad guys are killed, brutally, not counseled.
I know Jack Reacher only by the 1st movie with Tom Cruise. Obviously, i was unaware of any discrepancy with the novels.
What i most liked was the libertarian element: his living off the grid, his “art of not being governed”. (H/T James C. Scott.)
I thought of starting on the novels but never got around to it. But i probably will.
I admit that i never heard of JD Macdonald. My favorite canons (comparable in flavor & setting to the Reacher canon) are:
* the Nero Wolfe canon;
* the Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie canons;
* the Red Sparrow trilogy;
* the George Smiley canon.
The pleasures of the Travis McGee protagonist in the McDonald books – off-grid, loner, supremely capable – are very similar. Pure fluff. Fun, pro-masculine, pro-libertarian fluff, with some deducing involved. I’d guess that anyone who enjoyed the Reacher tales will also enjoy McGee. Downside: each book is only about an hour or two of fun. Short and pithy. If you do try them, start with his earlier ones. Character development occurs through the series.
Agree, but, having spent too much time traveling before I retired, I think that there is a place in life for airport books.
“Reacher” may become a modern-day parable, almost in the realms of King Arthur. How so? (I hear you ask). There are many similarities.
For those of a libertarian nature, the 2004 film of King Arthur is still relevant and topical. As “Brexit 410AD”, in the dying-days of a retreating European super-power that had abandoned Britain to its own fates. But still trying to impose an authoritarian rule on a Pelagian people.
David Goldman’s article on PJMedia, and the comments, might be of interest.
One more remark just came to mind: if Jack Reacher is as physically impressive as the novels and the new series depict him, then it would be difficult for him to live off the grid.
I always thought that Reacher was over-compensating, and was probably quite soft and artistic on the inside. Just give him a pink t-shirt, and ask him which wine he’d like with his toasted croissants, and we’d see a rounder, more complete, hero! And perhaps he can drive around in a Tesla. Better for the Earth.
Reacher is one of the few series that is equal to, and perhaps even better, than the original books.
I know Jack Reacher only by the 1st movie with Tom Cruise
Ditto, and his condescending attitude towards the normies who ran the busses and kept the lights on for him put me off the whole franchise.