Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher
First appearance	Killing Floor (March 1997)
Created by	Lee Child
Portrayed by	Tom Cruise
Information
Nickname(s)	Reacher
Gender	Male
Family	Laurent Moutier (maternal grandfather, deceased) Stan Reacher (father, deceased) Josephine Moutier-Reacher (mother, deceased) Joe Reacher (brother, deceased)
Nationality	American

Jack Reacher is a fictional character and the protagonist of a series of books by British author Lee Child.^[1] A former Major in the United States Army Military Police Corps, Reacher quit at age 36, and roams the United States taking odd jobs and investigating suspicious and frequently dangerous situations. The twentieth and most recent novel in the series is titled Make Me.^[2][3]

Fictional biography

The Jack Reacher character is described as being a former major in the United States Military Police Corps.

Born on a military base in Berlin, on 29 October 1960^[4] Jack Reacher (no middle name, known as 'Reacher' even to his family as a child. (Regular references are made to the fact that Reacher's given name is Jack, that it is not a nickname for John, and that he has no middle name. His military record officially refers to him as Jack (none) Reacher. From the time he was a boy, his family, even his mother, called him simply "Reacher", an appellation that has stayed with him, but was never given to his brother.)

Jack and Joe's mother Josephine Reacher (née Moutier) was a French national, both being fluent in French from early childhood^[5] but as Jack admits in The Affair (2011) he speaks the language 'Un peu, mais lentement' (a little, but slowly).

After being shunted around the world, growing up on US military bases as his father Stan was deployed, gaining an education in basic survival as well as an education that allowed him to enter the West Point Military Academy.

He served in the Military Police, mustering out at the rank of Major 1997. His unit, the fictional 110th Special Investigations Unit, formed to handle exceptionally tough cases, achieved results but in the process Reacher made enemies in high places, including members of the US Army Special Forces.

His achievements were recognised in the form of citations and awards including the Silver Star, the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Soldier's Medal, Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983.^[6]

Since leaving the Army, Reacher became a drifter wandering America in part because he had been accustomed to go where he was told go, when to go and what to do for every day of his life from military childhood to military adulthood. His wanderings are also driven by a desire to experience the country he served for so long without ever having lived in it. Prior to 9/11 Reacher takes the concept of travelling light to an extreme, his only baggage a folding toothbrush, but after September 11, 2001, with restrictions on wire transfers in the light of fraud he was obliged to carry an ATM card and photo ID in the form of a (generally expired) American passport.

Riding buses, paying cash, living in cheap motels, carrying no baggage other than the clothes he stands up in, habitually discarding his old clothes in changing rooms after buying new outfits that typically generic, durable, inexpensive and suited to the climate and locality. Over time his obsessive need to be free of ties extends to buying gourmet quality espresso coffee at a New York Cafe at the counter in a foam beaker so he can get up and walk away at a moment's notice.clear conscience and without a backward glance (The Hard Way).

Military Profile

After four years at West Point (1983 to 1987) Reacher achieved the ranks of 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Lieutenant, Captain, and Major^[7] in the Military Police. During his 13 years of service, Reacher is awarded the Bronze Star, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, a Soldier's Medal, and a Silver Star and Purple Heart for wounds and actions in the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983.

While his Silver Star and Purple Heart are cited on his profile all of the other medal citations involve official secrets and are therefore redacted.

Among his formal qualifications Reacher is described as the only non-Marine to win the Wimbledon Cup, a US Marine Corps 1000 Yard Invitational Rifle Competition; achieving a record score in 1988. Anecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat, Reacher describing himself as a brawler, his fighting style being described as akin to a thrown chainsaw with the motor running.

Demeanor and personality

In 61 Hours, an Army psychological study of reactions to fear in children is cited that showed Reacher to have abnormally fast reflexes and aggression levels at the age of six; Reacher believes that this abnormal level of aggression at that age is due not to genetics (as the Army report suggested) but because he got tired of being frightened, and "trained [him]self out of it".

In Never Go Back, Reacher was described by Susan Turner as being like "something feral." (p176) Her specific opinion says, " It's like you've been sanded down to nothing but yes and no, and you and them, and black and white, and live or die. You're like a predator. Cold and hard." (pp 176–177) She later changes her answer to him being more akin to an "actual animal" after she sees his various scars. (p 189)

In Die Trying, Reacher is wrongly suspected by the FBI of being involved in a kidnapping, assessing him as (solely on the basis of a few photos) as "[The big guy is] different. Different clothes, different stance, different physically. He could be foreign, at least partly, or maybe second generation. Fair hair and blue eyes, but there's something in his face. Maybe he's European, perhaps a European mercenary or terrorist." ^[8]

Skills

Reacher has an innate ability to tell the time without referring to a timepiece, in effect having an internal timer or alarm clock enabling him to rest or wake up at any time he chooses, to maintain a silent countdown or perform time-over-distance calculations in real time. He also has a (possibly related) fascination with and natural facility with, numbers (Bad Luck and Trouble) that raises the possibility he has a condition akin to Asperger's or other mild form of Savant Syndrome.

Reacher's fighting skills are compounded by his size and strength, his unconventional upbringing and youthful brawls all over the world enhanced by standard military training then amplified by in-depth technical and military knowledge. Techniques he uses frequently include elbow strikes, uppercuts, and headbutts. The martial art Keysi (the Keysi Fighting Method) is used in one of the street fights in the feature film Jack Reacher ^[9][10][11]) His experience, skills, knowledge, and brute strength aid him in fighting numbers of opponents single-handed but occasionally fight physically superior opponents, such the 7-foot-tall (2.13 m), 400-pound (181 kg), steroid-using thug he defeated by lifting him up and dropping him on his head.

While Reacher is skilled in various forms of martial arts he is not an expert in any particular form of hand-to-hand combat. He is similarly versatile in his choice of handguns, from a pair of .44 Magnum revolvers to a plethora of pistols, mainly in nine milimetre Parabellum, while in Nothing to Lose he goes into action with a suppressed Heckler & Koch MP5SD sub machine gun and a Benchmade 3300 spring assisted sliding knife (wrongly described as illegal outside of the military and law enforcement under US anti-switchblade legislation).

Reacher is also described as skilled marksman, principally in One Shot, being the only non-Marine to win the US Marine Corps 1000 Yard Invitational rifle competition, he also won the US Army Pistol Championship and served as a pistol instructor. In One Shot, Reacher uses his considerable intelligence with advanced technical and military knowledge during a long range shooting scene—slowing and counting his heartbeat while calculating wind, humidity, trajectory, speed, energy, and force.

Reacher attitude is neatly summed up during a fight towards the end of The Affair: At the start of Chapter Sixty Six he says while his foe - who he calls a warrior - was focused on tactical victory he [Reacher] lived to piss on the other guy's grave', or to paraphrase Jack Reacher is more focussed on winning rather than how he will win.

Habits and beliefs

Reacher has a love for music, especially blues.^[12] It was this affinity for the blues that inspired Reacher to get off the bus at the start of Killing Floor, and in the same novel reveals that he has a music collection in his head, replaying tracks as he travels without needing the technology others seem to be obsessed with and burdened by. Reacher explains this to detectives investigating an early morning suicide on a near-deserted New York subway near a visit to a Blues club on Bleecker Street (Gone Tomorrow, Chapter 7).

Reacher espouses no personal religious beliefs but is generally accepting of the beliefs of others, though he is scathing in his dismissal of the town boss Thurman's fundamentalist Christian position in the novel Nothing to Lose: When asked if he is 'born again' Reacher says 'Once was enough for me' and later in the same chapter rhetorically asks Thurman 'I'm here to visit the sick and you want to have me beaten up? What kind of Christian are you?' (Chapters 38 and 44). He also mentions at the opening of Bad Luck and Trouble (Chapter 4) that he avoids Alaska Airlines because 'they put a scripture card on the meal trays'.^[13]

Reacher is also critical of the corruption of traditional spelling, such as the use of contractions like "U" for "you", "lo" for "low", disliking then absence of the apostrophe in don't walk pedestrian before they were replaced then noting he also disapproved of replacing words with pictures (Chapter 20).

While Reacher knows how to drive and enjoys driving some cars (Tripwire; Running Blind; One Shot; and Personal, in A Wanted Man he professes to be a bad driver and in Bad Luck and Trouble he says he can't rent a car because he doesn't have a driving licence (Chapter 22) and in Without Fail Agent Frolich trawls various databases for her UNSUB (Reacher) only to discover he is effectively untraceable because without a driving licence she has no photograph and no address, which she concludes is both weird and a pain in the ass (Chapter 1).

His single indulgence - casual sex apart - is coffee, which he drinks more or less constantly:

As Reacher confesses [Joe] was probably the only other human on the planet who liked coffee as much as I did. He started drinking it when he was six. I copied him immediately. I was four. Neither of us has stopped since.The Reacher brothers’ need for caffeine makes heroin addiction look like an amusing little take-it-or-leave-it sideline (The Enemy, Chapter 5)

He does not often express an outright political opinion: Reacher does not have an objection to the American wars and military operations around the world, in many of which he took part (and in which his father took part) but that does not necessarily extend to approval of the politicians who started these wars or acceptance of the rationale behind them: in Die Trying, set in 1998, Reacher exclaims 'I did not vote for this President!' implying he either voted Republican in 1996 or did not vote before his lack of a fixed abode made voting impossible. In the same work Reacher, who kills a number of human beings without qualms has an ethical problem with the option of killing dogs loosed against him on the grounds the human beings messed with Reacher at their own risk but the dog is literally obeying orders and so 'can't be considered accountable'. Accordingly, Reacher takes pains to spare the dogs and manages to do so by winning a contest of will, staring them down until they back down. eyes and imposing his will.

Physical appearance

In A Wanted Man he is described as follows: "He was one of the largest men she had ever seen outside the NFL. He was extremely tall, and extremely broad, and long-armed, and long-legged. The lawn chair was regular size, but it looked tiny under him. It was bent and crushed out of shape. His knuckles were nearly touching the ground. His neck was thick and his hands were the size of dinner plates...A wild man. But not really. Underneath everything else seemed strangely civilized....His gaze was both wise and appealing, both friendly and bleak, both frank and utterly cynical." ^[14]

Reacher is described as being 6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m) tall, weighing 220-250 (100-113 kg) pounds and having a 50-inch chest; he is described in High Heat as having a very high stamina and virtually no body fat, though he is not a good runner. In Never Go Back, he was physically described as having "a six-pack like a cobbled city street, a chest like a suit of NFL armor, biceps like basketballs, and subcutaneous fat like a Kleenex tissue." In his youth, his physical appearance was described as that of a greyhound. He also reveals that his size is purely genetic; he states in Persuader and Never Go Back that he is not much of an exercise enthusiast.

He has various scars, most notably a collection of roughly-stitched scars on his abdomen caused by a bombing in Lebanon,^[15] with ugly raised welts that are later instrumental in saving his life, a 3–4 inch thin, white scar that intersects his shrapnel scar that he received during a knife fight in Gone Tomorrow, Reacher attributes his survival to the rough MASH stitch work (Chapter 83).

He also has various other scars: one from a chest shot with a .38 Special and a powder burn from a near-miss at point blank range, and one on his arm where his brother struck him with a chisel.

In Worth Dying For Reacher laments having his nose broken: on waking he memorably and painfully reset the break himself, irritated because after a lifetime of hard fighting he had come to regard his unbroken nose as a badge of honour.

Family

Reacher's maternal grandfather Laurent Moutier was a furniture restorer in Paris, who, at thirty years of age, volunteered for the French Army in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I, fighting at Verdun and The Somme.^[16] Between 1919 and 1929 he was commissioned to produce wooden legs for wounded veterans. Josephine Moutier was his only child. He died in 1974 at age 90, in his last days is said to have faced unflinchingly the approach of his death.The young Reacher met him three times and is described as having liked him.

Reacher's mother Josephine Moutier Reacher, born in France, was 30 years old when Reacher was born. She met Reacher's father in Korea and married him in the Netherlands.^[17] When she was only 13, she joined the French Resistance and under the alias "Beatrice" worked with Le Chemin de Fer Humain (the Human Railroad), saving 80 men.^[4] She garroted a schoolmate, a boy who threatened to give her up to the Nazis, and would later receive the Médaille de la Résistance (the Resistance Medal) for further heroism.^[4] She is described as having been widowed in 1988, and dying in 1990 at the age of 60 of cancer.

Reacher's father (Stan Reacher) was a United States Marine Corps captain, who served in Korea and Vietnam. His military service kept his family continually moving all around the world to various military bases. At the time of "Second Son", when his son Jack was 13, he was stationed in Okinawa and involved in preparing contingency plans for an invasion of Mainland China. When describing his father, Jack is quoted as saying, "(He was) A plain New Hampshire Yankee with an implacable horror of anything fancy...he had no use for wealth and excess. Very compartmentalized guy. Gentle, shy, sweet, loving man, but a stone-cold killer. Next to him I look like Liberace". After military service, "there was no place left for people like him".^[18] He died in 1988.

Jack had only one sibling, brother Joe Reacher, who was two years older than Jack. Joe was born on a military base in the Philippines, and Jack is described as helping Joe beat up the kids who gave him trouble in school, and vice versa. Joe was also a West Point graduate, and spent five years in military intelligence, where he never won any of the "good medals", only the "junk awards." Joe is described as joining the US Treasury Department, and died at age 38 in the line of duty, having arranged a meeting with a potential investigation subject.^[12][19] Because he was killed in the line of duty, his name can be found on the Treasury Department's Roll of Honor.

Acquaintances

Military era

• Elizabeth Deveraux, late thirties, is a former Marine serving as a county sheriff in Carter Crossing, Mississippi in 1997. She appears in The Affair, where she tacitly condones Reacher's highly illegal ways of getting rid of some unsavory characters. She was a potential lover for Reacher, as they had sex several times, but ended up drifting apart.
• Karla Dixon, age unknown, possibly late 30s is a forensic accountant; formerly a Major in the Army and part of Reacher's 'Special Investigators Unit', which he formed and led in the 90s. They are reunited in Bad Luck & Trouble and secretly rekindle an affair, which they regret not starting back in the Army. She is described as 'dark, very pretty, comparatively small' and slim. She is extremely good with numbers and shares Reacher's fascination with mathematics.
• General Leon Garber, retired, was Reacher's former commanding officer, mentor and close friend. His only child is Jodie. He risked his life to help Reacher in Die Trying, and willed him his house, as his daughter is wealthy, didn't want it and already owns her own New York City home. He also appears in The Enemy and The Affair, and (through his funeral) in Tripwire.
• Jodie Garber-Jacob, 30, is the daughter of General Leon Garber. She met and fell in love with Reacher when she was 15 and was off-limits to him. In Tripwire, she is divorced, using her married name, working as a corporate attorney and reunites romantically with him after her father's funeral. She and Reacher lived together in New York City and upstate New York in Leon's house which was left in his will to Reacher, his surrogate son. She is mentioned in Echo Burning as having moved to Europe. She appears in Tripwire, and Running Blind (The Visitor in the United Kingdom and Australia).
• Eileen Ann Hutton, age unknown, is a Brigadier General in the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps. She and Reacher had a relationship prior to, and featured in, One Shot.
• Dominique Kohl, 29, was a Sergeant First Class on the way up and assigned to Reacher's unit when he was a captain in the Army. She appears in Persuader, where Reacher remembers the events that lead to her death ten years earlier. Kohl is mentioned again in Personal, when Reacher partners with a woman who reminds him of Kohl.
• Duncan Munro, late thirties, is a member of Reacher's old 110th MP unit. He appears in The Affair.
• Frances Neagley, late thirties, is a partner with a successful private security firm, and former Army Master Sergeant and Military Policeman. She is of medium height, slim, and has dark hair and eyes. She spends large amounts of time in the gym and has a purely platonic relationship with Reacher, not liking to be touched. Her demeanor suggests that she could be considered a female counterpart to Reacher. Rarely impressed, Reacher describes her as sometimes scary. She appears in Without Fail, The Affair and Bad Luck and Trouble, and Small Wars. The first page of Bad Luck and Trouble includes a dedication "For the real Frances L. Neagley", who won a Bouchercon charity auction for the naming rights to a character.^[20]
• Stan Lowrey, late thirties, is a member of Reacher's old 110th MP unit. He is handsome, youthful, and full of energy. A kind of man that gets the job done. He appears in Bad Luck and Trouble and The Affair.
• Dave O'Donnell, late thirties, is a member of Reacher's old 110th MP unit. He appears in Bad Luck and Trouble. He is "tall, fair, handsome, like a stockbroker...carries an army blade in one pocket and a pair of ceramic brass-knuckles in the other." The ceramic knuckles are made from a composite stronger than steel, harder than brass and gets past any metal detector. He is meticulous, doesn't mind paperwork, and is usually underestimated because he looks like a white-collar office worker.
• Lieutenant Summer, 25, is an African-American Lieutenant in the Army Military Police. She is petite and slender, and appears in The Enemy. She is Reacher's accomplice throughout the novel and they have a brief relationship. She is promoted to Captain at the end of the novel.

Wandering era

• Officer Elizabeth Roscoe, 30, is a Margrave, Georgia police officer who becomes Reacher's ally and lover in Killing Floor.
• Holly Johnson, 27, is a newly inducted Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent and former Wall Street stock analyst. She is dark, attractive, self-assured and a knee ligament injury sustained whilst playing soccer requires her to use a cane. She appears in Die Trying. She is the only daughter of General Johnson, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is the goddaughter of the US President. During the adventure they shared, when they were kidnapped together and shared countless perils, they became romantically involved - but afterwards, Holly chose to marry a fellow FBI agent with who she was in love, and disappeared from Reacher's life. (Obviously, he could not have continued his wandering life while being the son in law of the army's most senior general.)
• Lisa Harper, 29, is an F.B.I. Agent, stationed at Quantico. She appears in Running Blind (The Visitor in the United Kingdom and Australia).
• Alice Amanda Aaron, 25, graduated from Harvard Law School, practising law at a legal mission in Pecos, Texas, as penance for coming from a wealthy family. She appears in Echo Burning.
• Carmen Greer, 30, is a housewife, short, slim, dark-skinned, fine-boned, "maybe 100 pounds". She is married with one child and an abusive husband. She appears in Echo Burning.
• M.E. (Mary Ellen) Froelich, 35, a US Secret Service Agent, charged with protecting the Vice-President. She had short fair hair, and is quietly confident. She dated Joe Reacher, before he broke up with her prior to his death. Later she was in a relationship with Jack. She appears in Without Fail.
• Susan Duffy, early thirties, is a rogue agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. She is pale, slim, and attractive, and appears in Persuader, where she beds Reacher.
• Vaughan, exact age unknown, is a police officer in Hope, Colorado. She is "probably less than five feet six, probably less than a hundred and twenty pounds, probably less than thirty-five years old" according to Reacher's estimate. Married to a totally incapacitated casualty of the war in Iraq (husband's name is Robert David Vaughan, called David). She befriends and briefly romantically involved with Reacher in Nothing to Lose.
• Helen Rodin exact age unknown, a lawyer defending James Barr arrested for 5 murders and claiming to be innocent. Helen helps Reacher find evidence that proves that James Barr is innocent. Helen only appears in One Shot and in the live action movie "Jack Reacher" based on the book.
• Detective Theresa Lee is a New York City Police Department detective who aids Reacher's take down of an Al-Qaeda team in Gone Tomorrow. They had a brief romantic episode before Reacher left to complete his task.
• Lauren Pauling, early fifties, is an ex-F.B.I. agent who now acts as a private investigator. She often refers to herself as being old. She was romantically involved with Reacher, since they had sex a few times. She appears in The Hard Way.
• Julia Sorensen is an F.B.I. special agent who is supposed to be in charge of an investigation, but actually finds herself framed by the Bureau. She is described as a soft-natured Scandinavian type and teams up with Reacher in A Wanted Man. There are some romantic scenes, but eventually Sorensen is killed during the mission.
• Susan Turner, early thirties, is a Major in the Army and is the commander of the 110th MP. She is described as a little above average height (5'7"), slender, with long dark hair tied back, tanned skin and deep brown eyes. Her face is described as conveying "intelligence and authority and youth and mischief at the same time". Her defining characteristic is her voice ... "warm, a little husky, a little breathy, a little intimate". She appears in 61 Hours and Never Go Back, where she and Reacher develop a romantic relationship.
• Michelle Chang, about forty, is a private detective and a former Special Agent with the FBI. She is Asian and about 5'9 or 5'10". She is described as "not petite, not a bone in sight." She has long black hair. She appears for the first time in the series in Make Me, where she and Reacher develop a romantic relationship.

Novel series

The Reacher novels are written either in the first-person or third-person. The schedule for the Reacher series, previously one-per-year, was stepped up in 2010 with 61 Hours and Worth Dying For both released in the same year.

Most of the novels are set in the United States, in locales ranging from major metropolitan areas like New York City and Los Angeles to small towns in the Midwestern and Southern United States. To date, Reacher's travels outside the US have taken him to rural England, (The Hard Way) London (Personal) and Paris, France, where Reacher visits his dying mother with his brother.

Series #	Title	ISBN	Date of Publication	1st/3rd Person	Plot
1	Killing Floor	0-515-12344-7	March 1997	1st	Reacher is arrested for murder in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia.
2	Die Trying	0-399-14379-3	July 1998	3rd	Just as Reacher helps Holly Johnson, an attractive young woman struggling with her crutches on a Chicago street, they are both kidnapped at gunpoint. Reacher and the woman are thrown into a dark van and taken 2000 miles across America, completely unaware why they were kidnapped and where they are going. Finding themselves trapped in a seemingly remote place, they must work together to find the answers.
3	Tripwire	0-515-14307-3	July 1999	3rd	Reacher is in Key West, digging pools by hand and moonlighting as a bouncer for a topless bar. He discovers the body of a New York investigator hired by "Mrs. Jacob" to find him. He finds out that she is attorney Jodie Garber, daughter of General Leon Garber, Reacher's mentor and surrogate father in the Army. She wants his help investigating her father's last project, a search on behalf of the elderly parents of their military MIA son. They soon find themselves hunted by a psychopath businessman and military criminal crippled in the Vietnam War, who has a shadowy business and other secrets to protect. Reacher inherits a house and a steady girlfriend, and contemplates sedentary life.
4	The Visitor (UK) Running Blind (US)	978-0-515-14350-8	April 2000	3rd	Two women are found dead in their own homes—in baths filled with Army-issue camouflage paint, their bodies completely unmarked—Jack Reacher knew them—and he knows that they both left the Army under dubious circumstances, both victims of sexual harassment. Reacher is under suspicion and arrested; as a former US military policeman, a loner and a drifter, he matches the psychological criminal profile prepared by the FBI Special Agent Julia Lamarr. When another woman is killed the same way while Reacher is under surveillance, he is released but pressured into helping the murder investigation. He has to find out what they have in common and why someone would kill more.
5	Echo Burning	0-515-13331-0	April 2001	3rd	Reacher hitches a ride in Texas. Carmen, the driver, is young, beautiful, and needs help. She has a little girl, is being watched by unseen observers, and has a husband who will beat her when he gets out of jail. At her remote ranch in Echo County there are lies and prejudice, hatred and murder. Her family is hostile, the cops can't be trusted and the lawyers won't help.
6	Without Fail	978-0-515-14431-4	April 2002	3rd	Reacher arrives in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and is intercepted by Mary Ellen (M. E.) Froelich, a beautiful secret service agent. She has a special request: That Reacher tell her the various ways, were he an actual assassin, in which he could kill the Vice-President; being made aware of any such methods would help her considerably in tightening her security detail in order to protect the Vice-President's life. He accepts the challenge, enlisting old colleague Frances Neagley to help carry out the mission. Suspicious and threatening letters have been sent to the Vice-President and intercepted by his protective team. Together, they attempt to find those responsible.
7	Persuader	978-0-440-24598-8	April 2003	1st	Walking along the street, Reacher sees Quinn, a man who should be dead. Reacher is a man who hates unfinished business. Ten years ago, a key investigation went sour and Francis Xavier Quinn got away with murder. Now a chance encounter outside Boston's Symphony Hall brings it all back. And Reacher sees his one last shot to finish what was started all those years ago.
8	The Enemy	0-553-81585-7	April 2004	1st	On New Year's Day, 1990, in a North Carolina motel, a two-star general is found dead. Within minutes, Reacher is ordered to contain the situation. But things soon escalate when Reacher discovers the general's briefcase is missing and within hours, the general's wife is killed. Reacher soon finds himself embroiled in a complex game of tug of war between powerful men in the United States Army, and beyond.
9	One Shot	0-385-33668-3	April 2005	3rd	In an innocent heartland city, five murders with six shots are done by an expert sniper. The police quickly identify and arrest a suspect, and build a slam-dunk case with iron-clad evidence. But the accused man claims he's innocent and says "Get Jack Reacher." Reacher himself sees the news report and turns up in the city. The defence is immensely relieved; but Reacher has come to bury the guy. Shocked by the request of the accused, Reacher sets out to confirm for himself the absolute certainty of the man's guilt, but comes up with more than he bargained for. The novel was adapted for the screen in 2012 as Jack Reacher, with Tom Cruise in the title role.
10	The Hard Way	0-385-33669-1	May 2006	3rd	After witnessing an exchange of $1,000,000. Jack Reacher is hired by the underhanded director of a private military firm to rescue his wife and stepchild, who appear to have been kidnapped. While Reacher uncovers clues that might lead to a rescue, he learns about the director's dubious past which involves a murderous plot against two ex-associates. He meets a beautiful ex-FBI agent converted to private investigator who assists him in the investigation to unveil the shocking truth, and ultimately engages in a showdown on a farm in Norfolk, England. The novel is set primarily in New York City.
11	Bad Luck and Trouble	0-385-34055-9	April 2007	3rd	Reacher is content with his choice of being a loner, a wanderer and being almost impossible to find. But someone makes a small anonymous deposit into his bank account, which triggers Reacher's fixation for math and his investigative instincts. Reacher deduces that the deposit is a signal only the eight former members of his elite team of army investigators would use. Obsessed with math like Reacher, Frances Neagley locates him because of the brutal death of one of their own. They race to reunite with the survivors of their old team and raise the living, bury the dead, and connect the dots in a mystery that grows more complex with more murders. With tortured murders and the lives of those Reacher considers family at stake, his usual emotionless demeanor breaks and he says of the killers, "They are dead men walking." The team falls into their old roles and routines with ease, their motto still their sacred rule: You do not mess with the Special Investigators. From Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Reacher gets his old investigation unit back together to get to the bottom of what's going on.
12	Nothing to Lose	978-059-305702-5	March 2008	3rd	Based in Colorado, travelling from the town of Hope to the town of Despair, it soon becomes clear that Reacher is an unwelcome visitor in a town with a lot of secrets to hide. Reacher cannot resist the opportunity to explore these secrets further, especially the peculiar town owner who has employed the majority of the population to work within his recycling factory.
13	Gone Tomorrow	978-0-440-24368-7	April 2009	1st	Reacher takes the subway late at night, and routinely checks his fellow passengers. Four are okay, but the fifth is not. Checking against his mental list for suicide bombers, he comes to the conclusion that the fifth is one. He is puzzled with her choice of timing and place, as it is not crowded; on the contrary the subway was exceedingly empty. He reasons with her, but she shoots herself; thereby proving Reacher wrong when he concluded she was a bomber. He is determined to discover why she killed herself and soon uncovers a massive conspiracy stretching from California to New York City to even Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of that country.
14	61 Hours	978-0-440-24369-4	March 2010	3rd	In South Dakota, a tourist bus crashes during a savage snow storm with Jack Reacher in it. Reacher gets caught up in a hunt for a murderer and the protection of a key witness. Meanwhile, a link to Reacher's past comes to his aid and brings a path to redemption.
15	Worth Dying For	978-0-385-34431-9	September 2010	3rd	Reacher arrives late one night in a rural Nebraska town. In the town's fading motel bar he overhears a drunk doctor's refusal to attend a domestic abuse. The victim of the abuse is married to the scion of the Duncan clan, which holds that part of Nebraska in its grip, keeping the population cowed and docile. Reacher talks the doctor into doing the right thing, and ends up embroiled in a smuggling ring and an unsolved disappearance from twenty-five years prior.
16	The Affair	978-0-440-24630-5	27 September 2011	1st	March 1997. Six months before the events of Killing Floor. Jack Reacher is still in the army. And there's big trouble in a small town in Mississippi, where a soldier's girlfriend is found with her throat cut from ear to ear. Local trouble? Or is the killer from nearby Fort Kelham, a giant base used by elite Army Rangers? In 1997, Reacher's orders are: go undercover, keep your distance, monitor the investigation. Eventually the army's official investigation produces a cast-iron prime suspect—and so does Reacher's undercover search. But Reacher's answer is not the same as the army's. If he keeps quiet, will he be able to live with himself? And if he speaks out, will the army be able to live with him?
17	A Wanted Man	978-0-440-24631-2	11 September 2012	3rd	Four people in a car, hoping to make Chicago by morning. One man driving, another telling stories that don't add up. A woman in the back, silent and worried. And a hitchhiker with a broken nose. An hour behind them, the FBI descends on an old pumping station where a man was stabbed to death- the knife work professional, the killers nowhere to be seen. All Jack Reacher wanted was a ride to Virginia. All he did was stick out his thumb. But he soon discovers he has hitched more than a ride. He has tied himself to a massive conspiracy, in which nothing is what it seems, and nobody is telling the truth.
18	Never Go Back	978-0-593-06574-7	3 September 2013	3rd	Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to his destination in northeastern Virginia, near Washington, D.C.: the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP. The old stone building is the closest thing to a home he ever had. Reacher is there to meet—in person—the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner, so far just a warm, intriguing voice on the phone. But it isn't Turner behind the CO's desk. And Reacher is hit with two pieces of shocking news, one with serious criminal consequences, and one too personal even to think about.
19	Personal	978-0-5930-7382-7	28 August 2014	1st	Someone has taken a long-range shot at the French president but failed to kill him. The suspected sniper has serious skills and is a hard man to find. Reacher tracked him down once and put him in jail. Now he's asked to hunt him again, and put him away permanently.
20	Make Me	978-0-8041-7877-8	8 September 2015	3rd	Reacher makes a stop in a place called Mother's Rest. There's a woman, Michelle Chang, waiting for a missing colleague, a cryptic note about two hundred deaths, and a small town full of silent, watchful people.
21	Night School	TBA	Fall 2016	TBA	TBA

Short stories

Reacher has also appeared in several short stories by Child. "Second Son," "Deep Down" and "Not a Drill" were all released originally for the Amazon Kindle although "Second Son" was later included in the American & Canadian paperback and Kindle editions of The Affair,^[21] and "Deep Down" with the American & Canadian paperback and Kindle editions of A Wanted Man.^[22] "High Heat" with the American paperback and Kindle editions of Never Go Back, "Everyone Talks" with the UK edition of Never Go Back, and "Not a Drill" with the American paperback of Personal.

"Second Son"

"Second Son" is a snapshot of the life of Reacher and his family circa 1974, while they are stationed on a military base in Okinawa. Upon arriving they immediately get into deep trouble that is compounded by some bad news. The action is interspersed with contemplative moments, such as when Jack's grandfather, a prosthetic-limb maker and World War I veteran in Paris, recounts that "… a great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves."

Reacher is 13 Years Old. His Birthday is Oct 29, 1960.

"Deep Down"

In 1986, summoned by military intelligence to Washington, DC, Reacher is sent undercover. The assignment that awaits him: the army is meeting with its Capitol Hill paymasters for classified talks on a new, state-of-the-art sniper rifle for US forces. But vital details about the weapon are leaking from someone at the top of the federal government and probably into the hands of unidentified foreign arms dealers. The prospect of any and every terrorist, mercenary, or dictator's militia getting their hands on the latest superior firepower is unthinkable. Reacher is tasked with infiltrating the top-secret proceedings and revealing the traitor. He targets a quartet of high-powered Army political liaison officers—all of them fast-track women on their way to the top. According to his bosses, it's a zero-danger mission, but Reacher knows that things are rarely what they seem.

"Guy Walks into a Bar"

The story is set in the moments before the beginning of the novel Gone Tomorrow. Reacher, while at a blues music club, observes what he believes to be the beginning of a kidnapping as part of a Russian mafia dispute. This story was published in The New York Times on 6 June 2009.

"James Penney's New Identity"

The story features Reacher, still in the Army as a captain, helping James Penney, a Vietnam War veteran who has recently been made redundant at work and had his car stolen. When Penney accidentally becomes a fugitive (after he accidentally burns down two neighbors' houses in the course of deliberately burning down his own in an act of frustration after being fired), Reacher helps Penney obtain a new identity so he can start a new life. The story has appeared in Fresh Blood 3 (1999), an anthology of mystery short stories edited by Mike Ripley and Maxim Jakubowski,^[23] and in Thriller (2006), a short story anthology of thrillers written by International Thrillers, Inc. members and edited by James Patterson.

"High Heat"

It is July 1977. Jack Reacher is almost seventeen, and he stops in New York City on the way to visit his brother at West Point. The summer heat is suffocating, the city is bankrupt, and the mad gunman known as Son of Sam is still on the loose. Reacher meets a woman with a problem, and agrees to help her . . . but then the power grid fails and the lights go out, plunging the lawless city into chaos. What does a visiting teenager do in the dark? If that visiting teenager is Jack Reacher, the answer is plenty.^[24]

"Everyone Talks"

A short story published as part of the UK hardback edition of Never Go Back, the story is told from the perspective of a female detective investigating an alleged shooting. Reacher, while in hospital, relates the events prior to the story beginning. This was also included in the June–July 2012 Esquire magazine.

"Not a Drill"

Hitchhiking in Maine near the Canadian border, Reacher is picked up by a trio of Canadians who claim to be outdoor enthusiasts. At the end of the road trip, Reacher parts ways with his companions and finds himself near a hiking trail sealed off by the US Army under mysterious circumstances. Reacher subsequently investigates the closure of the trail when one of the Canadians returns to seek his help.

"Good and Valuable Consideration"

When Jack Reacher sits down to watch a baseball game at a Boston bar, he has no way of knowing what kind of trouble is about to walk in the door - and not just because he's a Yankees fan in a Red Sox town.

In this action-packed short story, Reacher and a new acquaintance - Sox fan Nick Heller - find themselves drawn into a much less friendly rivalry when the guy sitting between them at the bar turns out to be a marked man...

"Small Wars"

Lee Child goes back to 1989, when Jack Reacher is serving as an officer in the military police.

A young lieutenant colonel in a stylish handmade uniform roars through the damp woods of Georgia in her new silver Porsche - until she meets a very tall soldier with a broken-down car. What could connect a cold-blooded off-post shooting with Reacher; his elder brother, Joe; and a secretive unit of pointy heads from the Pentagon?

Other authors' works

Reacher is mentioned several times in the Stephen King novel Under the Dome, where he is described by the character Colonel Cox as "the toughest goddam Army cop that ever served, in my humble opinion."^[25] Lee Child's endorsement of Under the Dome appears on the cover of at least one edition of the book.

Reacher is referred to in the Hunt for Reacher series of novels and short stories by Diane Capri, but is never explicitly seen. Capri has said in an interview that the series was inspired by her wondering "What's [Reacher] doing between books?"^[26]

Works chronology

In film

Paramount Pictures hired Academy Award nominated screenwriter Josh Olson to adapt One Shot, under the title Jack Reacher. Christopher McQuarrie, Oscar-winning screenwriter for The Usual Suspects was then brought in to re-write Olson's draft.^[28] It was announced in July 2011 that Tom Cruise - a 5'7" tall actor - would play Reacher, who is 6'5" tall in the books. Lee Child was quoted as saying, "Reacher's size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way."^[29] All Jack Reacher books have been optioned for film.^[30]

It was announced in September 2014 that Tom Cruise would take on the role again in a sequel. The movie will be an adaptation of the 18th Jack Reacher book Never Go Back. Christopher McQuarrie will not be directing due to other commitments with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation also starring Cruise. The replacement director has yet to be named.^[31] Lee Child has stated "It’s going to be a new backroom crew, which I think is good. I thought the McQuarrie movie was fantastic, but let’s see someone else’s take on it.".^[32]

See also

• Lee Child
• Military brat
• BBC Interview with Lee Child at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03jyp1h

References and notes

Bibliography

• Child, Lee (1997). Killing Floor. New York, NY, USA: Putnam. ISBN 0515123447. OCLC 38994823. 
• Child, Lee (1999). Die Trying. New York, NY, USA: Jove. ISBN 0515125024. 
• Child, Lee (2002). Without Fail. New York, NY, USA: Putnam. ISBN 0399148612. 
• Child, Lee (2004). The Enemy. New York, NY, USA: Delacorte Press. ISBN 0385336675. 
• Child, Lee (2010). 61 Hours. New York, NY, USA: Delacorte Press. ISBN 9780440243694. 
• Child, Lee (2011). The Affair. New York, NY, USA: Dell. ISBN 9780440246305. 

Further reading

• As yet not utilized expose on origin of Reacher character in author anger at injustice/folly: Curtis, Bryan (2012). "The Curious Case of Lee Child: Before Tom Cruise could become Jack Reacher, Jim Grant had to become Lee Child". GRANTLAND (20 December). Retrieved 5 September 2015. 

External links

• Author Lee Child's Official website
• Jack Reacher (the movie) Official website

Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child Novel series Killing Floor Die Trying Tripwire The Visitor Echo Burning Without Fail Persuader The Enemy One Shot The Hard Way Bad Luck and Trouble Nothing to Lose Gone Tomorrow 61 Hours Worth Dying For The Affair A Wanted Man Never Go Back Personal Make Me Night School Short stories "Second Son" Films Jack Reacher (2012) Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)