Jack Reacher with Lee and Andrew Child

[00:00:06] Lee Child got fired from his job. His job became, as they say, redundant in his industry, the television industry. And he said to himself, what am I going to do with my life?

[00:00:17] And like many people, he said, well, I'll write a book. Many people do it. I'll do it. Of course, many people fail at it. Lee Child didn't fail at it. He wrote the first Jack Reacher novel. Jack Reacher is the hero of Killing Floor, that first novel.

[00:00:34] And then the next 28 novels after that, plus a movie starring Tom Cruise, plus a TV series that my entire family watches all the time. So and hundreds of millions of copies of Jack Reacher books have been sold.

[00:00:48] Now there's a new Jack Reacher novel. The Secret just came out. And Lee Child wrote it with his younger brother Andrew Child, who henceforth is going to be the writer of the Jack Reacher series. It's a great honor to have them on the podcast.

[00:01:03] And these podcasts are always self-help for me. I wanted to learn how to write a thriller novel. Now I get the best thriller writers on the planet to come on. And here's Lee Child and Andrew Child. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host.

[00:01:24] This is The James Altiger Show. Thank you guys for coming on the podcast. And I'm a huge fan of Jack Reacher and the work both of you do. And I guess I would love an origin story. And I know that's like the cliche question.

[00:01:48] I almost hate asking that because I'm sure you've answered that a gazillion times. But, you know, everybody out there would love to know how Jack Reacher started, how you got into writing Lee. And then, of course, Andrew as well.

[00:02:01] You've been a thriller writer and now you're on the Jack Reacher series. So what's how do you guys start writing? I mean, for me personally, it was you get asked the question, how long have you known you wanted to be a writer?

[00:02:14] When did you first want to be a writer? And some writers answer, you know, they were seven years old and they were writing four page novels in composition books and they're still in the bottom drawer and all that kind of thing.

[00:02:27] And my friend, Harlan Coban has a riff about how he wanted to be a writer ever since he was a fetus and all of this kind of thing. But the truth for me is I never wanted to be a writer. All I wanted to be was an entertainer.

[00:02:42] For me at my age, plan A was to join the Beatles. And I thought that was a really sound plan, except for two things. Number one, they had no vacancies. Number two, I had no musical talent. Number three, I guess I was only nine years old.

[00:02:59] But I loved I loved love that proposition of doing something that made people intensely happy. I just saw the look in the audience's eye. They loved it and I wanted to do something that people would love. So entertainment was the thing for me.

[00:03:16] And I started in the theater briefly and then television. And then I lost my job in television, not due to any felony or misdemeanor on my part, but just that kind of corporate restructuring that everybody ran through in the 1990s. I was 39 years old.

[00:03:34] I was an expensive veteran with a big salary and a great deal and benefits and pension and all that kind of thing. And they just got rid of us all. Did you resent that? Oh, boy, yes, I did. I mean, absolutely. Not just for me.

[00:03:53] But for everybody, you know, it was a magnificent organization I was working for that had taken two generations to build up. And it was just being trashed in that stupid way that things were in the 90s.

[00:04:05] So yeah, I was intensely resentful and that shows up later, I think, because the main problem was I'd also been the shop steward for our union for the last couple of years, which I was blacklisted. I was never going to get another job in the business.

[00:04:21] So the question was, what next? What can I do? And basically it came down to nothing. I was incredibly hyper trained for the one job that I'd just been kicked out of. And so what next?

[00:04:36] So I took a step back and I said, fundamentally, what is it that you can do? And fundamentally, I know what people want. I know what they enjoy. I know what they like. I know what they respond to.

[00:04:50] And so it was a question of, all right, what else can I do that will utilize those perceptions? And I thought, you know what, I'll write a book. I've read some. How hard can it be? Well, it doesn't see well, it's first off,

[00:05:07] I love the idea of viewing a writer as an entertainer because it really is. It's the same thing as I don't want to say it's the same thing as the Beals, because obviously it's very different and it's not the same thing as,

[00:05:20] I don't know, being a comedian, for instance, where you're directly performing in front of an audience. But you are in some sense like you have to basically gauge an audience's reaction to something that you make up out of your mind

[00:05:32] and make sure it occupies their time long enough that they don't get distracted. Exactly right. Yeah. I mean, it's not the same as the Beatles, but it kind of is in a way we swim in this current of all kinds of different media,

[00:05:46] television, movies, books, music, podcasts, comedians, as you say. And we're all kind of different, but the same. The proposition is give people a good time, even if it's a few hours or a couple of days, just give them a good time.

[00:06:05] Yeah. And so, but at the same time, the hero Jack Reacher, this this this hero that has captivated, you know, tens of millions of people is very different from Brideshead revisited, for instance. So like how did you why did you decide, OK, this is going to be

[00:06:23] this is going to be the character I place my bed on my place, my career on? Part of it was instinctive and part of it was a tiny bit calculated that I looked around at what everybody else was doing with strong character driven series.

[00:06:39] And they were all doing what you might call a soap opera. And I got, you know, that's not a term of denigration to me at all. So popper is incredibly powerful narrative medium. And it put food on my table for a long, long time.

[00:06:54] So popper is great, but everybody was doing it. So my idea was to do something different. Don't do what everybody else is doing. So I wanted an anti soap opera where there are no continuing characters. There is no community.

[00:07:09] It is not set in a workplace or a neighborhood. Nobody has a dog. Nobody has a favorite restaurant, all that kind of thing. I didn't want that. I wanted a lone character thoroughly alienated from society, just wandering on his own to exploit a gigantic geography.

[00:07:29] So it really came down to what would be a plausible background for a character like that? I mean, most kind of rambling, wondering people are to some extent mentally ill. And I didn't want to do that. So who else does that kind of thing?

[00:07:45] And I found anecdotally the biggest source of alienation really is people that were in the military, man and boy, and are now no longer in the military. They're in the civilian universe and they don't understand it. They don't appreciate it. It's they're a fish out of water.

[00:08:03] So that's the root that I took. But it seems like it stumbled upon this this fantasy that everyone has, like, can I just stand up and walk away from these hard responsibilities, the mortgage payments, the nine to five job, the whatever and just live on my own terms?

[00:08:25] It kind of, you know, whether accidentally or intentionally you slipped into like the probably the biggest escape of fantasy that that people I would say even particularly men, but perhaps men and women that people have. Yeah, well, you know, Andrew should really answer this

[00:08:41] because it's never up to the right because he did run away from everything. It's not up to the writer to to dictate to the reader what they're going to enjoy. That never works. You just got to put something down and hope the reader enjoys it.

[00:08:55] And Andrew was the first ever reader. Because, you know, I needed to know that I wasn't wasting my time. And so Andrew is the only person that I that I was close to who would, a, give me an honest judgment and B,

[00:09:11] was experienced with this kind of genre. He knows about this. So I sent him the manuscript when he was still in pencil. And this is killing floor. Yeah, this is killing floor, still in pencil. And I was really, really depending on his reaction to know,

[00:09:27] is it worth carrying on or not? So the first impressions of the character are really a reader's, not the writer's. And Andrew was the first reader. So he should say what what it was he found appealing.

[00:09:39] Yeah. And I mean, I remember that so well, you know, when when Lee sent me the that first draft because the tables were sort of turned at that point because I had a great job with a, you know, with a great salary

[00:09:52] and all the benefits that he was talking about before. And he was out of work. And I knew he had a mortgage. He had a family. And so I knew that writing these books was his plan to put food on the table

[00:10:04] and keep a roof over their head. So when I set out to read the book, I was terrified because I was thinking, what if it's no good? What if I'm going to be the one who has to call him up and say,

[00:10:15] sorry, you know, get ready for, you know, being homeless and starving, you know, or am I going to have to let him live in my spare room? What's going to happen? So I remember picking up that manuscript and reading it. It was the most nerve-wracking thing.

[00:10:29] And of course, I needn't have worried because it was a fantastic book and it laid the foundations for everything that followed. But one thing I remember... I'm just curious, did you have any criticism or constructive criticism at all that you handed over to Lee?

[00:10:45] Well, I don't know if it was constructive criticism. There was one kind of one thing that popped up into my head, which was that he had his brother killed in the book. So I'm reading this manuscript and I get to the bit about the brother

[00:10:59] being brutally murdered and I'm thinking, you know, is there any kind of Freudian aspect to this that I need to be aware of? Well, it's an older brother. So you're you couldn't justify it that way. It's an older brother. He didn't want an older brother.

[00:11:11] He was happy with the younger brother. Exactly. That's true. That was the only consolation. But one thing that I remember also clearly was, you know, the way that that book is constructed, its first person narrative. So you're seeing everything through Richard's point of view,

[00:11:26] but he gets arrested in the diner. He gets dragged off to the police station. He gets questioned and he has this thing where he's not. He refuses to respond. So it's a long, long time before you find out his name. And I remember very clearly that feeling of,

[00:11:41] I don't know this character's name, but I know this character. And I think that is something that really helps readers bond with Richard, because there's something about Richard's experience. You know, he's being he's having a terrible day. We've all had terrible days.

[00:11:59] He's being picked on by the authorities, you know, whether that be your boss or the police or, you know, your landlord or somebody, everybody's had that experience of being unfairly picked on by an outsider. And so here is Richard sharing those experiences.

[00:12:16] But what he can do that every all of us can't is he can do something about it. He can fight back. He can refuse to answer the police's questions. He can escape. He can beat up the bad guys. He can figure out the puzzles.

[00:12:29] So it's a perfect combination of everything that we will experience in our lives, but are frustrated. So we recognize it. We bond with it, but we can't do anything whereas Richard can. So that's where you kind of bridge between recognizable, everyday experiences

[00:12:47] and that kind of wish fulfillment, escapism that is so powerful and so attractive. And again, the lack of or the lack of attachment and the lack of rules, those two things, but with a strong ethical backbone. And so these aspects, again, is this almost like you say,

[00:13:06] wish fulfillment where there's this idea of freedom. Jack Reacher is first and foremost free. He can he's free to pursue justice. He's free to move to the next town. He's he's free. He doesn't have to get social media followers. He's not a he's not a digital guy.

[00:13:22] So, you know, there's there's I think that's a big fantasy for many people, including myself. I think so. And I think the way that everyday life has developed, you know, life in the 20th century when Richard started 21st century now,

[00:13:38] it's it's all about accumulating things, which in some ways make your life easier. You know, your car is easier to drive them walking to town. You know, dishwasher is easier than washing dishes by hand. But at the same time, all of these things that are supposed

[00:13:51] to be extra convenient, they kind of accumulate and then end up weighing you down. Because what are you going to do when the car needs new tires? What are you going to do when the dishwasher is broken down?

[00:14:01] It's just all of these extra things which occupy space in your head more than anything else. And I think a lot of people share that experience of almost feeling suffocated or feeling weighed down by just the the accoutrement of everyday life,

[00:14:15] just all the all the stuff that we have and we have to think about and we have to maintain and we have to pay for. So I think the idea that you could just walk away from all of that,

[00:14:24] you know, different parts, different periods in different people's lives. It's going to feel more attractive at some points than others. But that idea that you could just walk away, you would be burden free.

[00:14:35] You'd feel like you could walk on air, I think, if you could really do that. Andrew, since you're now taking over the helm of the Jack Reacher series, do you see it ever moving in a slightly different direction where there might be

[00:15:05] something consistent from book to book, like a girlfriend or a home base or a dog? I mean, Jack Reacher loves animals, loves dogs. Well, I think the key to answering that question is something that Lee said earlier, which is about trying to understand what your audience wants.

[00:15:21] And so, you know, I've been part of that audience for more than 25 years and I've been to all kinds of events before covid when book when books came out, you'd have the in person events, you have the tours to all the bookstores and all the libraries and everything.

[00:15:36] I would go to as many of those as I could and a bit like I used to do in my theatre days, you know, if you want to know whether a play is any good,

[00:15:42] you don't read the reviews, you stand in the foyer at the end and listen to people as they're leaving. And that's what I would do. I'd be in the audience and I would hear what people were saying. So we've got a good sense of what people want.

[00:15:54] And I think that people don't want Reacher to change. You know, our father was from Ireland, so he could get away with this. He used to have this expression, the same only different. And that's what we aim for. We want Reacher to have all of those consistent characteristics

[00:16:10] that people love. We don't want those to change, but of course, we do want the books to be to feel fresh and feel new. So we want him in different scenarios. We want him facing different kinds of villains. We want him solving new kinds of puzzles.

[00:16:25] But we don't want to take away any of those comfortable, satisfying, welcoming aspects that people over the years have come to love and have come to look forward to. You know, if you think about like, let's say in the decades before Reacher, you have like,

[00:16:43] I'll just name some classic series that revolve around a single hero. Like the most classic being like James Bond, or then you get to like, you know, like Jack Ryan type of heroes. These are heroes that they're sort of anti-authority, but they work for authority

[00:17:00] and they can't really express as much as perhaps they would like their anti-authority aspects. Do you think that's what kind of breaks Reacher out compared to like these older heroes? I think that, yeah, you know, you say go back decades.

[00:17:18] I mean, really it goes about hundreds of years, if not millennia. The idea of the Knight-errant and somebody like James Bond is kind of half in and half out of the establishment. He's a commander in the Royal Navy. He's employed by the security services.

[00:17:36] He's part of a structure and yet he's somewhat disapproved of. He's somewhat people are suspicious of him. You know, the boss is always chafing at the things he gets up to. So he's got one foot in and one foot out, which is part of the Knight-errant thing.

[00:17:55] A Knight-errant is a knight, you know, Sir Lancelot or whoever, who then for some reason gets banished. He's banished from the court and sentenced to wander the land and do good deeds. And the same myth occurs practically everywhere.

[00:18:12] You know, it's the Ronin myth in Japan, the samurai that is disowned by his master and banished, and so there has to be two things. Number one, a sense of previous status. And Reacher has that because he was a West Point graduate and a major

[00:18:28] in the US Army. So his status is there and the banishment is not that he's been shoved out because of a transgression necessarily, but just that the Army got smaller after the end of the Cold War and he was one of the ones kicked out

[00:18:44] so that he has been banished in a way. So he has this previous nobility now he's banished. And that is I think the key aspect to this character that goes back literally hundreds of years. You know, it's a Western concept in the US. It's medieval in Europe.

[00:19:01] It's Scandinavian sagas, Greek tragedies. This character has always been around. And so you got to ask yourself why? Why is this character being reinvented over and over again? Over thousands of years. You know, Robin Hood, all of these characters are really the same guy.

[00:19:19] And the answer is because we want that guy, we would love to have a guy like that just show up and solve our problems because everybody has a problem, might be trivial, might be super serious, but everybody's got a problem.

[00:19:33] And wouldn't it be great if there was a knock on the door and this big, huge, silent man showed up to fix your problem and then left afterward? That is again a super part of the key. He's got to leave afterward.

[00:19:47] He can't hang around and have all kinds of gratitude issues. He just shows up, solves a problem and rides off into the sunset. It's a perpetual fantasy that we all want. You know, I think there's another key difference with the character

[00:20:02] like James Bond because, you know, as Lee said, he's half in and half out. And the half of the foot that he's got in the establishment, Bond, you've got to think about when he was written and what extra role he was playing.

[00:20:14] So Bond was conceived at the end of the 50s into the 60s in England. And England at that time was a great, depressed, dour bankrupt place where people out of, you know, they struggled. They had miserable lives.

[00:20:32] And on top of that, the country was coming to trying to come to terms with the fact it was its place at the top table had been lost. Bankrupt after the Second World War no longer the key player it used to be.

[00:20:44] So people were struggling with these two issues. So along comes this character, Bond, who has this extravagant lifestyle. He goes to casinos, he drives Bentley's in the books. He goes to Nassau. He gives people a different kind of escapism. He gives them a glimpse into another world.

[00:21:05] And on top of that, he kind of carries this extra baggage for the country because there's this enormous international problem. The CIA can't solve it. The KGB can't solve it. So what do they do? They come to Bond to take care of it.

[00:21:20] You know, which is obviously ridiculous. But people loved it because it gave you know, he would. But so the point I'm trying to make is that Bond was carrying all of this additional baggage on a kind of national scale, whereas Reacher

[00:21:32] appeals, I think, on an individual scale, because it's not about someone coming and fixing the problems of your whole country. It's about like Lee said, someone knocking on your door and fixing your specific individual problems. Well, it's interesting how it goes from the national to the individual

[00:21:49] because I sort of feel like music also made that transition during those period during those decades as well. Like, like, you know, Lee, you sort of grew up in, you know, this period where not only the Beatles but then punk was was rising in England.

[00:22:05] And there's like this punk aspect to not obeying the rules and not, you know, living by other people's boundaries, you know, not respecting authority, living on your own terms. Do you think, you know, given your ambitions initially as a musician,

[00:22:21] how much of an effect did you think that had on the character? I think a lot. Yeah. I mean, as a whole in general from from those 60s onwards, the whole world became much more connected. And that's something that I remember. One specific memory I had, I mean,

[00:22:38] I loved the Beatles and I followed all the news and all the stories and gossip and everything. And I remember the story from January 1964. This was just a little bit before the Ed Sullivan show. A few weeks they were doing a residency in Paris at the Olympia,

[00:22:56] staying at the Jorps Sank. And meanwhile, the PR campaign in America was cranking up. And one night after the show, they were back in the hotel room and Brian Epstein gets a phone call from New York, which in 1964 was just impossibly exotic. Somebody's phoning you from New York.

[00:23:18] So Epstein answers the call and listens for a little while and puts down the phone and he says, boys, you're number one in America. And to me, that was such a pregnant phrase. First of all, symbolized the way that the world was connecting,

[00:23:37] that we were all becoming the same culture. And secondly, as a personal ambition, I just wanted to hear that. And all those years later, when I did get my first number one in America, my went straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list,

[00:23:55] my publisher was a smart enough guy to have remembered what I'd said about this. And I was in Chicago on tour and he called me and he said, Lee, you're number one in America. And I just thought that I could die and go to heaven right now.

[00:24:14] And talk about the link, the links to music, that first number one, that was bad luck and trouble. So that was a direct connection to music. And music plays a huge part in Reacher when he's wondering the land,

[00:24:25] when he's stuck somewhere, he can just play music in his head. You know, music is a huge support system for Reacher. Yeah. And, and, you know, Andrew, how about for you like now? You know, you know, Lee had all of these things going on where

[00:24:41] you could you could see it in the books like Jack Reacher was redundant in the military. So, you know, just like Lee's experience with television, he's on his own. He has to figure it out. He goes from town. He does this thing.

[00:24:54] How do you feel you can bring yourself into the Jack Reacher character? Now that you're starting to write these novels. Well, it's a great question. And I think I think a lot of the the factors that help Lee, you know,

[00:25:07] of the experiences have been similar when I worked in the telecommunications industry, for example, we had a very similar path because I work for an organization that in its heyday was magnificent. They invented so many of the technologies that we use today and that have

[00:25:25] moved the industry forward and that have enabled that connected world. Lee was talking about so I was very happy working for a company like that until the management typical same story management wanted to cut costs. They wanted to get rid of the experienced

[00:25:44] professional people and replace them with with younger cheaper ones. I never actually got pushed out of the door. I had to make the decision to leave on my own. But I certainly remember that that that experience of essentially being pushed

[00:25:58] aside because they didn't appreciate what you were doing. And I think that is one of the things that informed reaches character. And on top of that, which is very similar people, the same things make us happy, the same things make us sad, the same things make us angry.

[00:26:13] So I think all of the things that feed into maintaining reaches character in the same way, I think they're already there. Plus, and forget that we for 25 years, any time we hung out, we would talk about Reacher in this kind of ridiculous way.

[00:26:28] We'd talk about him as if he was an imaginary extra brother. We'd be saying what would Richard do about this? What would Richard think about that? And so we've just had this whole period of time, quarter of a century

[00:26:40] where we had fun, you know, we were just talking about Reacher would be would just be a great way of kind of communal daydreaming. And then the difference now is that rather than just let those words

[00:26:52] float off into the ether, what we do now is we just capture them and write them down. So it's really a very natural process. And what I'm hoping to do is just really keep going with, you know, sure enough, some maybe slightly newer scenarios

[00:27:09] because my background I'm more up to date with some of the technological things just because of the jobs I had. But I hope that, you know, with a slight updating of some of the scenarios

[00:27:20] that Reacher faces like we did with the Sentinel, you know, where he had to deal with cyber crime, which was a complete mystery to him. I hope that we can really keep Richard going just the same as he has been for the past 25 years.

[00:27:34] Yeah. And it'll be interesting because it's like what you were saying before, the same but different. Like, you know, I imagine this is not every Jack Reacher story, but I imagine a Jack Reacher story is some place new. He sees something bad happening.

[00:27:51] He is determined to solve it and then, you know, the puzzle gets unraveled. I'm not I'm oversimplifying, of course. That's a pretty good summary. You could work with us if you want. Maybe I'll pitch scenarios to you. But how do you can you veer from that?

[00:28:08] Is that or is that like a blueprint? I mean, I think the great thing about the the Reacher books is that at the beginning I had no idea what I was doing. And so I just wrote the first one based on instinct.

[00:28:24] Just what I wanted, what I personally wanted to happen. And actually a lot of writers do that, I think, you know, they love reading. They absolutely live by reading and yet they are a little dissatisfied with what they're reading. And so they think, you know what?

[00:28:41] I'm going to write a book that turns out exactly the way I think it should. So that's all I ever did. It was very random, very unstructured. Nothing was ever planned. And so that gives Andrew now the liberty to do whatever he wants.

[00:28:57] You know, Reacher could get a job if he wants temporarily. Reacher could do anything, go anywhere. And I think what Andrew brings that I didn't have is it is really understanding the corporate world in a way that I was never exposed to.

[00:29:14] He had that period in a corporation where there was a management hierarchy and so on and so forth, which everybody has. You know, whatever your job is, you could be a medical accounts clerk or something like that and your job will include management above you.

[00:29:33] Some of whom are idiots. And that is a source of frustration in your life. And Andrew really understands that very well and that translates to everything. You could show the military that way. The military is really like a big corporation with a hierarchy.

[00:29:48] And some of the people above you are idiots. And so that experience can translate directly into practically any aspect of life. And so I think that also helps Andrew make the secondary characters more complex and more interesting because he's seen how people interact in these massive organizations.

[00:30:10] And so that I think there are he's bringing extra strengths to it. And what he's bringing is 25 years of perspective as a reader, whereas I was purely the writer and I was so close to it. I wasn't really aware of where it was going.

[00:30:26] He was standing back a bit and he was aware of how the series was meandering here and there and so that he now can use that perception to bring it back to where it should be or whatever he thinks is necessary. But there are no rules.

[00:30:45] You know, Richard can do whatever he wants. He could he could go and be emperor of a foreign country if he wants. We'll just have to see what happens. And I like this idea of having no plan. So and you know, there's always different

[00:30:59] philosophies and there's and of course there's no right way. But you know, again, with a thriller or a mystery, there's always points where you're the reader thinks, oh, I've got it now. This must be what's happening or this must be the bad guy.

[00:31:13] And every author has different ways of dealing with that. But it seems like with a Jack Reacher novel, no matter what I think, I'm always wrong and and and is that something you know in advance? Like you figure out, oh, the readers probably going to think this guy

[00:31:28] is the bad guy and I'm just, you know, we're going to make him wrong somehow. You know, really, I am the reader. So for two thirds of the book, I'm thinking somebody else is going to be the bad guy.

[00:31:40] And then somehow the logic of the story says no, it's got to be this other person. And so it evolves as it goes along. And the really interesting thing about having no plan is that actually it's not true.

[00:31:54] You you do have a plan based on 10,000 mystery or thrillers that you've read before. It's kind of baked into your brain, the basic rhythm and grammar of a thriller. So even though you think you don't have a plan,

[00:32:10] actually, you have this massive database of every other plot you've ever read, every reveal you've ever read, every surprise you've ever been subjected to. You've got all of that. So doing it without a plan is actually not quite right.

[00:32:28] You're doing it with a kind of 100 year plan that is based on everything that has worked before. Well, I was going to say also we're kind of instinct, too, because, you know, we respond to reading books just the same as you were describing.

[00:32:45] You know, there's this part of your brain, you know, there's a puzzle there. You know, there's a question. You want the answer, you want the solution. So we're used to that. We know what that feels like. We're just looking at it from the other side.

[00:32:57] And a lot of the way that you have to do that is based on instinct. It's based on the fact that, you know, Lee grew up wanting to be an entertainer. All I ever wanted to do was be a storyteller. You know, you'll just use to it.

[00:33:08] It's in you somewhere and you you just have to trust your instincts when it comes down to when you reveal things, what you reveal, how you reveal them. And yeah, of course, you know, who eventually in a thriller, who's to blame? Who is the bad guy?

[00:33:24] And that's that's the really fun part of it. It can be hugely frustrating if your three quarters of the way through and the different strands aren't coming together the way you thought they would. But you've got to just embrace that and allow them to come together

[00:33:38] the way that the story dictates. And when you when when they do, it's so so satisfying. And also, it's not so much to do with revealing the bad guy in the last chapter. Because again, there's no plan, there's no formula.

[00:33:54] So some of the books, it's been pretty obvious who the bad guy is from the first chapter and then the appeal becomes what is Richard going to do to him? And and exactly how is he going to do it? That is what propels the narrative.

[00:34:08] You know, so I read this quote once. I forgot who said it. This author said, if you're ever confused in the middle of your novel while you're writing it, kill off the main character.

[00:34:17] And of course, you don't you can't kill off Jack Richard, but you could kill off the main suspects. I mean, as you sort of see it and I wonder in some of the books that maybe

[00:34:26] you were thinking this, but I'm just I'm just curious if you ever thought of it that directly like, oh, I don't know how to untangle here. So I'm just going to kill off this guy. Now I'm forced to untangle in a way.

[00:34:37] You know, I'm ruled entirely by instinct. And I can remember a couple of books where there was Richard and he usually meet somebody, usually a woman and they usually are working together in some to some degree.

[00:34:51] And I remember a couple of books where she just got shot in the head and was gone, you know, halfway through the book or two thirds of the way through the book. And I can't say why it just it just happened.

[00:35:02] And to create stakes and poignancy, I suppose. And so, yeah, you know, you can do you can do anything. It's a solo show. It's basically about Richard and the people around him are usually nice and we want we want them to survive.

[00:35:21] But their peril is kind of a proxy for Richard's peril, because as you say, the only problem with a long running series is there is no tension at the beginning will Richard survive? Of course he will. We buy into that as a series reader.

[00:35:39] So you've got to find the tension somewhere else. Andrew, you know, you guys are 14 years apart, which by the way, it's a long you have no other siblings. You're the two siblings. So why did your parents go 14 years without having another kid? Oh, we do. We have two.

[00:35:58] I feel like one of you was a mistake or one of you are mistakes. Well, yeah, we do have we do have two other siblings. So three of us. We were a family of three boys, you know, neat and close together at

[00:36:10] the beginning, all born in the 1950s. And so we were a family to parents, three boys. And then I guess it was, you know, the late menopausal mistake, the miscalculation, they thought they could get away with it. And I remember I was 14 and my mother was 41 years old,

[00:36:31] which back at that time was considered very old. And she was partly happy about it and partly embarrassed about it. And partly worried about how that we were going to react. You know, I was 14, girlfriend of my own by this point.

[00:36:49] And how would I react to a baby in the family? Actually, and actually, I loved it. It was great. It was absolutely fabulous. The experience of having Andrew and then later on, I got a dog, which made when I had my own kid, I was totally prepared.

[00:37:06] I knew how to do it. Andrew, you said earlier that you always wanted to be a storyteller. Now, obviously, you were probably in your 20s when Lee started writing these books. But was was he an influence on your desire to be a storyteller?

[00:37:35] And you yourself have done your own thriller novels under the name Andrew Grant. How much of an influence has Lee been on you developing your style and genre and so on? We know he's been a huge influence in a number of ways.

[00:37:49] And one of those ways is that we we both feel really that growing. We grew up kind of independently because by the time I was coming into my own, he'd already left home. So we both when we talk about it, we realize we both have the same experience

[00:38:05] of feeling like complete outsiders. You know, we felt growing up in that house with other people who were so dissimilar to us in every way, different outlooks, different attitudes, different values, it felt like either you were a changeling at the hospital

[00:38:21] or you were, you know, I think it's one reason why I always left spy fiction, for example, because I really felt like I was having to pretend to be somebody different to fit into this alien world just like you would if you were a spy.

[00:38:34] So we have that shared feeling, that shared experience growing up. But for me, it was easier because I could see that he had escaped, you know, when he was working in TV, for example, he had this fabulous glamorous job in

[00:38:47] TV, so, you know, struggling through, I could feel well, just keep going because there are opportunities. There's hope at the end of this, there's light at the end of the tunnel. So that really helped.

[00:38:58] You know, I could get away, I could go visit him, we would have fun hanging. I could hang out with somebody who was like me for the first time in my life as opposed to people who not only would unlike me, but, you know,

[00:39:10] violently disapproved of everything that I thought or did. So it was great to get up to have that. And then as time went on, you know, I think the storytelling part, some of that was probably it was, you know, it's this form of performance.

[00:39:24] A lot of people, you know, a lot of people who wound up writing in a way they would have liked to have performed either as a musician or an actor or something like that. But you don't have the talent for that.

[00:39:34] So you have to find a different outlet. And then if you're telling stories all the time, you're creating alternative worlds that you can live in rather than the boring one that is reality. So I'm sure that that is another common thread for us.

[00:39:48] But then later it was interesting because the reason I decided, you know, I'd done some I had my own theater company. I'd worked in theater. I'd had to leave that and work in the corporate world just for financial

[00:39:59] reasons and then the sort of the creative outlet for me. I just had to read more because I wasn't in a position to participate in or even really go watch plays in the theater anymore. So I realized that I'd kind of deviate just just somehow

[00:40:18] started loving crime fiction, spy fiction, action, adventure books, all of those kind of things. It wasn't a conscious choice. Oh, let's focus on these books. It just happened. And then one I remember the critical thing the catalyst was one day

[00:40:33] I was reading a book that really started out as the perfect thriller. The kind of book where you won't get off the bus or the train because you're too engrossed in the story. You'll stay up all night reading it and therefore miss work the next day.

[00:40:48] It was one of those books that just grabbed you and would not let go until the end. The end was terrible. It was the worst ending of any book I'd ever encountered. And I remember thinking, well, why did the author do that?

[00:41:01] It set up all of these fascinating scenarios and didn't take advantage of any of them. He had these characters that this character could have done this thing, that character could have done that thing. Why didn't he follow through on that?

[00:41:13] And what that did is it became an itch that I had to scratch. I had to figure out, I had to find out, could I do this? Could I be a writer? And so I looked at what Lee had already achieved.

[00:41:24] Of course, he was he was hugely successful, which told me, A, it's possible. But then the kind of devil on your other shoulder is saying, yeah, but the odds of one brother making it are remote. The odds of two are infinitesimal, but somebody said to me,

[00:41:41] the two saddest words in the English language are what if? And I didn't want to get to the end of a kind of successful mediocre career in an ordinary field and then look back and think, yeah, but what if I had tried to be a writer?

[00:41:58] So I thought, I've got to try. I've got to see if it works. And at that point, it was very useful to have Lee's insight because he could tell me how the game was played. You know, you finish the book,

[00:42:07] you try to get an agent, the agent tries to get you a deal. Here are some things it's a good idea to do. Here are some things that you really better not do. That was very helpful. But then in it like in any industry,

[00:42:18] you know, in publishing, there's a lot of resistance to anything that feels like nepotism, you know? So the last thing I wanted was to appear to be writing on his coattails. I wanted, I was absolutely determined that I was going to make it on my own.

[00:42:34] So I used a different name. I used a different agent. I went to a different publisher. Everything in the beginning was designed to be as separate as possible, even to the point where when I was writing, I would try.

[00:42:48] I would find that my style naturally was very similar to his. And I deliberately had to change it because I didn't want it to sound. I didn't want my books to sound like Leigh Child Knockoffs. I wanted them to have their own distinctive voice.

[00:43:03] So I had to work for many years on sounding different. So then of course it was quite an irony when the tables turned and all of a sudden I had to try very hard to sound exactly like him. That was, you know, that was a weird, weird shift.

[00:43:18] So I think that the combination of all of those things led to that sort of being diverted for a period of time and then coming together where we are now. And Leigh, what did you think of Andrew's first attempts at writing?

[00:43:36] What advice did you give him on the writing side? I had learned that you the only advice you can ever give another writer is ignore my advice because in order to work, a book has got to have a beating heart of its own.

[00:43:51] It's got to be a vivid, vital creation. And the only way you can do that is if it is the product of one person's imagination and nothing else, even if you're certain that you're doing it wrong or that nobody else does it that way.

[00:44:06] If that's how you want to do it, that's how you should do it. So basically I said to him, look in detail, ignore my advice. But as he said, you know, the rules of the game, I could give him shortcuts about what scenarios to avoid,

[00:44:23] mainly to do with relationships with publishers and so on. This is a business where you've got to fit into a certain extent so that most of my advice was practical rather than literary. And I loved what he did.

[00:44:36] I loved his he wrote nine thrillers before he joined me on the Reacher Project. And they're all good. They're all great. And I was actually very reluctant to ask him to take over Reacher because it meant

[00:44:51] that I would not see any more of his own stuff, which I had actually been loving. So it was a double edged sword for me. It's great that Reacher continues in the world.

[00:45:01] But I feel like as a reader, I've lost a couple of things that I really wanted to continue. Did you consider the James Patterson approach of almost like I don't want to use the word factory, but bringing on others

[00:45:16] with different ideas to kind of take the brand further. I mean, it was a possibility and I like James Patterson. I got no problem with him at all. He's a really nice guy and what he runs essentially is a bit like a kind of

[00:45:32] Renaissance atelier like Rembrandt used to do. Rembrandt would walk around and he would paint the hard brits. You know, he would do the faces or the hands or whatever. And a couple of other guys would do the backgrounds.

[00:45:45] So Patterson is that's an ancient tradition and there's nothing ignoble about it. But I didn't want to do that partly because Patterson works incredibly hard. And of course, the sub agenda here is that I wanted to retire. You know, what I say to people in America, especially,

[00:46:05] they don't really understand that desire. I said, never forget I'm from Europe. I have no work ethic. And so my idea was to we would do these four, these four books and the one that's coming out now,

[00:46:20] the secret is the last of the four as a transitional period. And then I'm out of it. I'm going to be lying on my sofa reading other people's books so that the idea are doing a Patterson type thing, which requires dozens of projects running

[00:46:35] all at once and input for hours every day. That was not in my plan. Well, do you have a plan? Like when you say retire, do you plan on doing nothing? Yeah, I mean, I've done so much traveling as part of this job.

[00:46:51] I've been all over the world. And so the usual thing is you retire and travel. It's the other way around for me. I retire and I don't travel. And so I just want to be able to read because at the every writer is

[00:47:08] fundamentally a reader hundreds of times more than he's a writer. And so the only thing that I have ever resented about being a writer is all those hours that it takes up where you're not reading something else.

[00:47:20] And so I'm going to try and catch up now in the years ahead. I've got a very comfortable sofa. I spend most of the day horizontal with a book propped up on my chest. And I'm just in heaven that way.

[00:47:35] Well, if you guys were to recommend one book to let's say there's someone who wants to be a writer, someone wants to be a thriller writer. What's one book you would recommend? Obviously not one that you've written.

[00:47:47] I think the cliche question again on machine, but there it is. Well, I'm going to nominate the one that actually did that for me, which was that I was on vacation in Mexico in the 1980s flying back through Miami and at the Miami airport. I needed a book.

[00:48:05] So I grabbed a book by a guy called John D. McDonald, never heard of him before. And it was called The Lonely Silver Rain. And there was something about that book that it was a wonderful entertainment.

[00:48:18] It's the Travis McGee series, which is a fabulous series, one of the best ever. But there was something about it that not only on the surface level of a great, great story, it was a bit like a blueprint.

[00:48:30] I could almost hear McDonald telling me, this is what I'm doing. This is why I'm doing it now. This is what it's going to mean in a few pages. It was like a blueprint. And so that to me was the book, The Lonely Silver Rain by John D.

[00:48:46] McDonald. That's what showed me how to do it. Last question I've always been curious about. You don't really see a lot of crossovers in these series. Have you ever considered like, OK, you know James Patterson calling up and say, listen, let's have Alex Cross and

[00:49:02] Jack Reacher team up on a case. I've entertained that idea with loads of people. You sit around and you you kid around about it. I mean, Harry Bush, Michael is a good friend of mine and it would be hilarious to do that.

[00:49:19] But you you immediately sort of blunder head on into the reality of contracts and copyright. And you know, Harry Bush's TV deal versus Jack Reacher's TV deal. Plus we're with different publishers and all that kind of thing. It just becomes too complicated.

[00:49:41] It occasionally crops up when we do short stories for whatever anthology is asking for one that attracts less attention. It's kind of under the radar a little bit. And so there have been crossovers like that.

[00:49:55] I did one with Joseph Finder, where our characters were together for a while. I did one with Kathy Reichs, where Jack Reacher and Temperance Brennan team up to solve the problem, but only in short stories where you can kind of get away with it. That's so interesting.

[00:50:15] I never I never knew that it happened. So that's good. I'll have to check those out. Well, you guys, you know, Lee Child, Andrew Child, author of the upcoming book, The Secret. I read it. I loved it.

[00:50:28] It's the hard thing with interviewing authors of novels is that it's hard to talk about the book because everything is kind of a reveal after the first chapter. But it's been so fascinating hearing your stories and your approach and listening to you guys interact.

[00:50:44] So I'm so thankful you came on the podcast. I really love The Secret and obviously it's going to do great. And I wish you luck with this this merger of talents and ambitions. You know, as you go forward and Lee, good luck with your retirement.

[00:51:00] I doubt you'll be able to do it, but we'll see. Thank you. And next book, don't forget to come back on. I'm going to be an avid reader of that one as well. So I'm looking forward to it.