Every four seconds, somewhere in the world, a Lee Child book is sold. This phenomenal statistic places Child alongside Stephen King, James Patterson and J.K. Rowling as one of the world’s bestselling novelists. But what makes the Jack Reacher books so successful? This is one of the questions Andy Martin, a lecturer in French and Philosophy at Cambridge, sets out to answer in this intriguing and uniquely unclassifiable book. Reacher Said Nothing, however, isn’t a work of literary criticism or a how-to guide. Martin contacted Child and asked whether he could observe the entire writing process for the 20th Reacher novel, Make Me. Amazingly, Child said yes.
‘So far I have no title, no real plot…. I don’t have a clue about what is going to happen,’ Child tells Martin on the first day. This, for most novelists, would be a startling admission, especially in crime fiction where plotting is paramount. Martin perches on a couch as Child sits down, lights a cigarette, and begins to write. By the end of the day, Child has smoked 26 Camels, drunk 19 cups of coffee (‘I’m writing on the verge of a stroke,’ he quips) and written 2,000 words. It’s fascinating to watch the process of writing unfolding in real time — the hours Child spends agonising over a particular word choice, the weighing up between different types of POV, the slow accretion of plot and forward momentum. It shouldn’t work — after all, writing is a predominantly mental activity — and yet it does in a way that makes you wonder why no one’s thought of doing this before.
Throughout the seven months it takes to write the novel, Martin continually questions Child over the choices he makes, whether it’s regarding the placement of a comma or the ethics of assisted suicide.
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