Blue Moon: Why (finally) I’ve probably had enough of Jack Reacher
The Lee Child penned Jack Reacher novels have been a publishing juggernaut for over two decades, a set of novels that the genre crowd eat up and the literary crowd express a grudging admiration for. Started at a time when the England born Child (James Grant to his former Granada TV colleagues) was approaching a loose-end in his media career, the novels took a deceptively simple trope beloved of the Western genre since time and the move westward began – a stranger arrives in town and becomes implicated – often despite his best efforts – in local wrong-doings. Reacher is an army brat, ex-marine, honorable and free. Built like a brick shithouse and with a particular set of skills that would make Liam Neeson wince. A man not to be messed with who will arrive in town, similar to the 1980s series Highway to Heaven, but instead of an angel with a perm, you have an unstoppable justice machine that doesn’t mind using his talents to exact suitable revenge against anyone who he feels isn’t giving others a fair shake.
A Reacher novel, much like the works of the less talented but more prolific James Patterson, is generally as predictable as a Big Mac. There will be villains, there will be violence, there will be blood. This violence will often be described in minute detail, following the Child dictum of doing ‘the slow things fast and the fast things slow’. There will even be a little bit of detective work (though not that much). Things will be set to rights. The villains shall be vanquished and the meek may – probably briefly because this is America – inherit the earth. Then Reacher will return to his travels. Just a man wandering the great American highway.
In many respects he is a man to admire, someone to look up to and even – best attempted in daydreams – to seek to emulate. He fights the bad guys, gets the girl, and gets to leave at the end, justice meted out effectively, townsfolk thankful, and somewhere in it all a woman who is well-laid and has been left with a happy memory of a brief and enjoyable ship in the night. Reacher’s relationships are short, have no strings attached, and rarely possess any proper emotional heft.
It’s a well-trod formula. So well-trod that I once read seventy pages of one in the local library before I realised I’d read that novel before. They are generally tautly written, possess a strong turn of phrase and are stocked with plenty of strong description (most are well over 400 pages). In many respects they are the perfect airport read. And their presence in stacks at the front of bookstores bear testament to that.
There are even a few films and a projected TV series. The first film featured five foot five Scientologist Tom Cruise as the six foot five, blond Reacher, Jai Courtney as the lead henchman, and a deliciously boo-hiss performance by Werner Herzog as the villain orchestrating everything in the (literal) shadows. It also possesses a solid cast of your typical Lee Child extras – cute woman Reacher might sleep with, corrupt locals in denim, shady authority figures, (ultimately) well-meaning older gents who help Reacher attain his goal. It’s an enjoyable romp and will tell you all you need to know about a Reacher novel without opening a page.
I’ve read about ten of them. They are quick reads, have some nice stylistic flourishes and have some inventive plots. But fuck it am I done after reading ‘Blue Moon’.
Reacher is on a bus entering a town like any other when he sees a young hoodlum checking out an old man. Clearly robbery is on the youngsters mind, and after alighting from the bus, Reacher keeps an eye on things until the kid makes his move, dusts up the potential mugger and dusts down the potential mugging victim. Old-timer shaken but only moderately stirred, Reacher accompanies him home where he hears that the man and his wife are in deep to some local loan sharks (Albanian). See there are two gangs in this town – Albanian and Ukrainian – and with the police either corrupt or incapable, there is no-one to stand up for the little guy. So far, so Reacher (and so Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing, A John-Claude Van Damme movie I can’t be bothered to google, Lucky Number Slevin dot dot dot). Reacher will step into the fray. He’ll meet a cute girl (who will hint at a relationship but accept that Reacher is a lone wolf not for settling down), corral some of the honest locals (ex-marine, ex-tank commander among them), and take out the bad guys.
And boy will he take out the bad guys. With fists, with guns, with fire, with a guitar. While yawning too probably. The tone of this book sets Reacher’s levels of boredom and the overall sense of ennui at eleven and barely lets up. There is a nihilism here, a sense of a job done once too many times. He’s even taking polls on if people should be killed now (Yes, Yes/No, no). Jack Reacher needs a new bag. He’s bored of doing this and his boredom – reaching Die Hard 5 levels of disinterest – can’t even be sated by a body count reaching Die Hard 2 levels of mayhem. Jack Reacher is turning into Bruce Willis – snarky, bored, probably voting for Trump. He drives around town with a badly injured local mobster locked in the trunk, shrugging off concerns over whether the guy might die in there. He’ll promise someone he’ll let him go if the guy talks, and then kills him anyway. Any semblance of morality is as dispensable as one of the outfits he bins whenever he needs a change of clothing. He’s become the hero for the demographic that watches Fox News and listens to Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine albums while still not understanding the lyrics.
This off-white knight has really just turned into a wrecking ball who acts as the judge, jury and executioner many of his readers want him to be. It may be reflection in keeping with the development of America. The Killing Floor (1997) was written pre-9/11, pre-Iraq mark II, pre-Trump. There are now battles on the streets and racist sympathisers on the news and in government. People treat basic medical advice as an impingement on their liberty as daily death tolls from Covid pass those of Pearl Harbour or 9/11. Tolerance of others is in short supply. People want action and they want news that suits their own world view with no time for other viewpoints. They want cathartic violence and cipher-like villains.
Jack Reacher was a stripped-down American James Bond when he stepped off that first bus, with only the clothes on his back and a desire for travel after years in a uniform spent following orders. But he – like Child who has followed writers like James Patterson in roping in others to do their writing – has been doing this too long. This is a cash cow that will continue to produce wealth for writer and publisher. It’s also a guilty pleasure that is carrying way too much questionable baggage for me to still find it pleasurable.
