Andrew Smith's Reviews > Reacher Said Nothing Lee Child & The Mak

Lee Child’s latest Reacher novel is Make Me (Jack Reacher 20). It was released in September and I enjoyed it – maybe not as much as I had some in the series, but I’ve always admired the way these stories flow and I love the idiosyncratic hero. As a long-term fan of the series I’m on it like a dog on a turkey dinner as soon as each new episode is released. So the opportunity to retrospectively observe the author writing the book – of being a fly on the wall - was something I was not going to miss!

Andy Martin is an academic and an author: he lectures in French at Cambridge University and has written a number of books on such heavyweight subjects as the lives and writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. He too is a long time fan of the Jack Reacher books and so having convinced Child of the merits of recording the metadata of the book’s creation he sets off to New York, where Child is based.

It seems that Child commences the writing of each new book on 1st September, the same date he started writing the first book in the series, Killing Floor. It’s fascinating to see how he lays down a sentence or two and gradually develops the story. At commencement, he has no idea what will happen in the rest of the tale – it will develop organically in the coming days, weeks and months. It’s hard to believe that there’s no starting structure, no sketched out plot, but it seems this is how he always does it.

Like Reacher, the author drinks a lot of coffee (up to twenty or so cups a day) and he smokes a good deal too – something Reacher gave up because he didn’t like carrying things around. There’s quite a bit of banter between author and shadow author, they seem to get on well. There’s also a good deal of discussion between the two on writing craft and grammar. In fact, I was surprised how technical the whole process was and just how much thought and care went into the detailed construction of the text. As an example of the level of discourse, the following is a response supplied by Martin to Child after the latter read out a short sentence he was particularly pleased with:

Nice parataxis, no subordination and the simile, of course. Oh yeah, and the sibilance… it was plain and simple yet it had an onomatopoeic feel to it.

And there’s lots of discussion like this.

Child himself has a phenomenal memory and he seems to store information, mostly trivia, that Reacher may or may not regurgitate at some point. He comes across as an open and charming guy, and the process of writing the book is as surprising and interesting as I hoped it’d be.

Whether you’re a Reacher fan or just interested in the craft of writing, there’s loads here to float your boat. I can’t wait for the next Reacher book and now I have knowledge of its rough path to completion I'm sure I’ll appreciate all the more!