Lee Child on creating suspense

If you don't know the Jack Reacher novels of Lee Child, you should.  Entertaining, fun, and always page-turning reads, these books keep you moving forward like no other.  Child has published seventeen of them so far, and the franchise still has plenty of legs.  Plus, the first movie based on one of his books, Jack Reacher, which comes from the novel, One Shot, debuts December 21.  (I'll comment later on whether the relatively short Tom Cruise manages to pull off the role of the 6'5" Reacher, but I certainly have my doubts.)  Child's writing has many strengths, but chief above them is how much they keep you reading. 

Kyle pointed me to this New York Times article from Child, in which he tackles the question of how to create suspense.  I won't attempt to summarize what he explains in relatively short order, but if you're at all interested in writing suspenseful books or understanding how they work, I recommend you check it out.

I am greatly interested in a secondary aspect of the article, which is that we so often ask the wrong question.  More on that in another post.