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Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me
Fans of Lee Child know well that the muscular star of his bestselling novels, Jack Reacher, is a man of few words—and a lot of action. In Reacher Said Nothing, Andy Martin shadows Child like a literary private eye in a yearlong investigation of what it takes to make fiction’s hottest hero hit the page running. The result is a fascinating, up-close-and-personal look into the world and ways of an expert storyteller’s creative process as he undertakes the writing of the much anticipated twentieth Jack Reacher novel, Make Me. Fueled by copious mugs of black coffee, Lee Child squares off against the blank page (or, rather, computer screen), eager to follow his wandering imagination in search of a plot worthy of the rough and ready Reacher. While working in fits and starts, fine-tuning sentences, characters, twists and turns, Child plies Martin with anecdotes and insights about the life and times that shaped the man and his from schoolyard scraps and dismal factory jobs to a successful TV production career and the life-changing decision to put pencil to paper. Then there’s the chance encounter that transformed aspiring author James Grant into household name “Lee Child.” And between bouts at the keyboard in an office high above Manhattan, there are jaunts to writers’ conventions, book signings, publishing powwows, chat shows, the Prado in Madrid, American diners, and English pubs. “Can I—the storyteller—get away with this?” Lee Child ponders, as he hones and hammers his latest nail-biter into fighting trim. Numerous bestsellers and near worldwide fame say he can. Jack Reacher may be a man of few words, but Reacher Said Nothing says it all about a certain tall man with a talent for coming out on top.Praise for Reacher Said Nothing “Martin, an unabashed fan of Child’s work, conveys his excitement at hanging out with Child.”—Publishers Weekly “In more than seventy tight vignettes . . . Child, his backstory, and his work come alive. Martin’s irrepressible glee about the project is infectious. Recommended for fans of Child’s work or aspiring novelists who could benefit from an insider’s view of the messy, complicated, and transcendent act of writing.”—Library Journal “Amazingly enjoyable and genuinely enlightening, largely because Lee Child is as thoughtful and as amusing as you’d think from reading his great thrillers.”—Sullivan County Democrat “An unusual entry in the annals of literary biography . . . fascinating . . . I could not stop reading.”—Sarah Weinman, The Crime Lady “One-of-a-kind . . . It’s funny, serious, a kind of mock-heroic and heroic together. It’s quizzical and respectful, sophisticated and self-deprecating.”—Professor Dame Gillian Beer “Andy Martin is no mere ‘Reacher Creature,’ as fans of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher are known. He’s something of a Reacher Teacher. Martin’s book is the perfect accompaniment to all things Reacher. It explores, it explains, and it entertains. Like a detective novel, Reacher Said Nothing takes you down alleys and lanes and streets cast in shadow—but the journey isn’t urban, it’s in the boulevards and byways between your o
370 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 19, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 128 reviews
December 11, 2015
On September 1, 1994, an aspiring author went to the store and bought the paper on which he would write Killing Floor, the first novel to feature the protagonist who would become the legendary Jack Reacher.
Oh, what a difference a couple of decades can make. On that date in 1994, Jim Grant had been recently fired from British television and was virtually broke. Hoping desperately that he might find something he could do to support himself and his family, he sat down with a pencil and a pad of paper, attempting to reinvent himself as a novelist. Twenty years later, having created one of the most successful franchises in the history of thriller novels, "Lee Child" sat down at his sleek Apple computer in his very expensive home in New York City (one of several that he has around the world) to begin the twentieth book in the series.
In this case, he was accompanied by Andy Martin, a literary scholar from the University of Cambridge who also happens to be a huge fan of both Jack Reacher and the man who created him. From the first line to the last, Martin would shadow Child through the process of writing the book that became Make Me.
I came to this book, immediately after reading Make Me, both as a fan of the Reacher series and as a writer who was very interested to see how someone much more successful than I at this business approached his craft. It's both encouraging and at the same time very frustrating to see that Lee Child and I work in much the same way, although he obviously makes it work much better than I.
It's nice to see, for example, that his work habits are at least as loose as my own--actually maybe even worse. He allows himself to be constantly distracted, especially in the early stages of the process. There's always email to check, coffee to drink, and a fair amount of time spent doing things totally unrelated to the project at hand.
Like me, and like most other writers, I suspect, Child would argue that even when he's watching soccer or doing something equally mindless, the novel is constantly working itself out somewhere in the subconscious regions of his mind. As with most of us, that's probably true some of the time and not so much true at others.
Fledgling writers who've gone out and bought five or six of those books that purport to tell you the formula for writing a novel, will probably be gravely disappointed to learn that one of the most commercially successful writers of the modern age does virtually none of the things that those books advise: He doesn't outline; he doesn't create complex biographies for each of his characters; he doesn't post notes all over the place tracking the plot; the man just sits down and starts writing without the slightest idea where the book might be going. He figures that it will all work itself out somehow, and so far it has, for the most part brilliantly.
It's a lot of fun to watch the new Reacher novel take shape but certainly no fan of the series would want to read this book without first reading Make Me. There are way too many spoilers, which is no doubt inevitable in a book like this. One might argue that Martin sometimes gets carried away discussing literary theory and other such matters that might be of interest principally to academics like himself, but that's a fairly small complaint.
Martin devotes one chapter of the book to a trip on which he accompanied Child to the 2014 Bouchercon Convention in Long Beach, California. Bouchercon is a Major Deal--a huge convention that annually brings together several hundred crime fiction writers and fans.
Child was still in the process of promoting Personal, the nineteenth of the Reacher novels, and he was very much in evidence as the convention progressed. I remember that we had a drink together in the hotel bar at that Bouchercon--along with about eight thousand other people, of course. As always, there were a lot of other big names in attendance--people like Michael Connelly, for example--but watching Child and the crowd of writers and fans orbiting around him, I remember thinking that Child was something like a supernova while the rest of us, especially people like me, were rank pretenders who had drifted in from some galaxy far, far away.
I doubt very much that reading this book is going to make me a better or more successful writer. But in the several times I have seen him, Lee Child has always impressed me as a genuinely nice guy, and it's good to see that someone who, like so many of the rest of us, was once down on his luck and only dreaming of being a hugely successful author was smart enough--and lucky enough--to make it work. Reacher Said Nothing is a very interesting book that should appeal to large numbers of "Reacher Creatures" and other writers as well.
Oh, what a difference a couple of decades can make. On that date in 1994, Jim Grant had been recently fired from British television and was virtually broke. Hoping desperately that he might find something he could do to support himself and his family, he sat down with a pencil and a pad of paper, attempting to reinvent himself as a novelist. Twenty years later, having created one of the most successful franchises in the history of thriller novels, "Lee Child" sat down at his sleek Apple computer in his very expensive home in New York City (one of several that he has around the world) to begin the twentieth book in the series.
In this case, he was accompanied by Andy Martin, a literary scholar from the University of Cambridge who also happens to be a huge fan of both Jack Reacher and the man who created him. From the first line to the last, Martin would shadow Child through the process of writing the book that became Make Me.
I came to this book, immediately after reading Make Me, both as a fan of the Reacher series and as a writer who was very interested to see how someone much more successful than I at this business approached his craft. It's both encouraging and at the same time very frustrating to see that Lee Child and I work in much the same way, although he obviously makes it work much better than I.
It's nice to see, for example, that his work habits are at least as loose as my own--actually maybe even worse. He allows himself to be constantly distracted, especially in the early stages of the process. There's always email to check, coffee to drink, and a fair amount of time spent doing things totally unrelated to the project at hand.
Like me, and like most other writers, I suspect, Child would argue that even when he's watching soccer or doing something equally mindless, the novel is constantly working itself out somewhere in the subconscious regions of his mind. As with most of us, that's probably true some of the time and not so much true at others.
Fledgling writers who've gone out and bought five or six of those books that purport to tell you the formula for writing a novel, will probably be gravely disappointed to learn that one of the most commercially successful writers of the modern age does virtually none of the things that those books advise: He doesn't outline; he doesn't create complex biographies for each of his characters; he doesn't post notes all over the place tracking the plot; the man just sits down and starts writing without the slightest idea where the book might be going. He figures that it will all work itself out somehow, and so far it has, for the most part brilliantly.
It's a lot of fun to watch the new Reacher novel take shape but certainly no fan of the series would want to read this book without first reading Make Me. There are way too many spoilers, which is no doubt inevitable in a book like this. One might argue that Martin sometimes gets carried away discussing literary theory and other such matters that might be of interest principally to academics like himself, but that's a fairly small complaint.
Martin devotes one chapter of the book to a trip on which he accompanied Child to the 2014 Bouchercon Convention in Long Beach, California. Bouchercon is a Major Deal--a huge convention that annually brings together several hundred crime fiction writers and fans.
Child was still in the process of promoting Personal, the nineteenth of the Reacher novels, and he was very much in evidence as the convention progressed. I remember that we had a drink together in the hotel bar at that Bouchercon--along with about eight thousand other people, of course. As always, there were a lot of other big names in attendance--people like Michael Connelly, for example--but watching Child and the crowd of writers and fans orbiting around him, I remember thinking that Child was something like a supernova while the rest of us, especially people like me, were rank pretenders who had drifted in from some galaxy far, far away.
I doubt very much that reading this book is going to make me a better or more successful writer. But in the several times I have seen him, Lee Child has always impressed me as a genuinely nice guy, and it's good to see that someone who, like so many of the rest of us, was once down on his luck and only dreaming of being a hugely successful author was smart enough--and lucky enough--to make it work. Reacher Said Nothing is a very interesting book that should appeal to large numbers of "Reacher Creatures" and other writers as well.
September 26, 2018
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!
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!
February 7, 2016
"But I Digress..." might be a better title for this book since that is what Martin does throughout. I had hoped for some insight on the creative process utilized by Lee Child, one of my favorite authors, instead most of the book seems to be digressions about Martin himself - what he ate, wore, where he went etc. Strange side journeys into comments about authors and issues that only a professor could love (he teaches at Cambridge) like the decision to use the the preterite tense versus the pluperfect, side arguments with Child over the number of words in a sentence (some obsession over the number of words in book) and tallying things like the day in March when Child finished 2,173 word while drinking 19 mugs of coffee and smoking 26 Camel cigarettes. Some of the material is interesting - how Jim Grant chose the name Lee Child to write under, some snarky comments about David Baldacci who many feel based his character Puller on Child's Jack Reacher, some mutual admiration tidbits about the Stephen King and Child but most of the book is far off the point. The book is dedicated to "All those loyal readers of Lee Child who may have bought this book by mistake." Guess I would fall into that category but my mistake was one of expectations.
February 7, 2017
If you are a fan of the Lee Child "Reacher" series, you will like this book, at least most of it. If you are not a fan of the "Reacher" series, then you won't have an interest in reading a book that will most likely confuse you anyway.
This book is about a college professor/writer who sits with Lee Child for a year while he writes a book in his best-selling mystery/suspense "Reacher" series. I looked forward to really get into Lee's head while he developed his ideas and plot from thoughts onto paper and into a final product. You do get some of that as well as cool behind-the-scenes stories about Lee, his background as a writer, and his personal thoughts and philosophies. Those things I enjoyed as well as other interesting tidbits about Lee like his vast consumption of coffee and cigarettes. However, there were some things I didn't enjoy. About halfway through the author deviated into too many esoteric arguments around language and philosophy that was unnecessary.
Overall, if you are a "Reacher" fan, then this was an interesting read. If not, skip it.
This book is about a college professor/writer who sits with Lee Child for a year while he writes a book in his best-selling mystery/suspense "Reacher" series. I looked forward to really get into Lee's head while he developed his ideas and plot from thoughts onto paper and into a final product. You do get some of that as well as cool behind-the-scenes stories about Lee, his background as a writer, and his personal thoughts and philosophies. Those things I enjoyed as well as other interesting tidbits about Lee like his vast consumption of coffee and cigarettes. However, there were some things I didn't enjoy. About halfway through the author deviated into too many esoteric arguments around language and philosophy that was unnecessary.
Overall, if you are a "Reacher" fan, then this was an interesting read. If not, skip it.
January 28, 2017
This is supposed to be a book about Lee Child writing a book. Instead it is a book about Martin writing a book about Child writing a book. There's a big difference. The book is more about Martin than Child.
While the book did offer some good insight into Child, it was plodding. Especially the end. I didn't think I would finish the last 50 pages.
Also, the guy is an academic. It's obvious because he like to remind us of it quite often. He quite often tells us about the academia books that he likes to read.
While the book did offer some good insight into Child, it was plodding. Especially the end. I didn't think I would finish the last 50 pages.
Also, the guy is an academic. It's obvious because he like to remind us of it quite often. He quite often tells us about the academia books that he likes to read.
November 5, 2016
I don’t usually read non-fiction, so this book was rather a departure for me. As a massive Jack Reacher fan I knew it was a book I wanted to read. What I hadn’t anticipated was just how illuminating and thought provoking it would be for me as a writer too. It's a captivating snapshot of the life and process of Lee Child during the writing of MAKE ME – illuminating how his life and his writing feed into each other. As a writer, it made me consider my own process – the similarities, and the differences – and was inspiring, reassuring and educational. It’s a lesson in thriller writing – the Lee Child equivalent of Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ – distilled through the expert observations and analysis of Andy Martin. It’s an honest, access-all-areas study of a writer at the top of their game, and it’s also a brilliantly entertaining read.
June 12, 2016
This was a double delight because not only does it give the reader an inside look at the author Lee Child, it also shows how Child wrote one of my favorite books of his, Make Me. Child granted a fellow writer unusually candid access and that's what makes most of this book so good. Child comes across as totally real and honest. You can almost imagine having these conversations with him yourself. Shadowing an author while he writes a book and portraying that to the world is an almost impossible task, but for the most part the author of this book pulls it off. There are some parts where he seemed to ramble like he had run out of things to say, but those weren't frequent.
December 4, 2015
An eminently readable chronicle of the process by which Lee Child creates a new Jack Reacher novel from the first line to the last. Martin's approach takes interesting deviations both in subject matter and in style as he wanders from Child's couch where he witnesses the creation--sometimes line by line--of the new Reacher novel, "Make Me", to a wide range of meetings, conversations, and meditations, some of which are written almost like scenes from one of Child's own books.
For many fans of the Jack Reacher series, this will likely read as a very welcome love letter to the books and to their author. However that same quality put up a barrier for me--holding up Lee Child's work and thinking so high that we never really see any failings or genuine struggles. Like Reacher himself, Child is portrayed as almost incapable of failure--even at the smallest level. Every choice is ultimately a brilliant one to the point, every sentence of Make Me deemed both ingenious and almost demanding of literary analysis. Sometimes even Child's endless consumption of cigarettes and sugar smacks starts to sound like an ingenious chemical compound, specially devised to unleash maximum literary potential.
Perhaps some of this comes as a reaction to what Martin sees (and I think rightfully so) as unfair dismissal of the Jack Reacher books as purely commercial fluff. Child is, without doubt, a careful, thoughtful, and extremely talented storyteller. There is a deep rigour in Child's approach and a rejection of working to formula that comes through in Martin's chronicle which is a testament both to the quality of the work created and the intelligence of Child's massive readership.
For many fans of the Jack Reacher series, this will likely read as a very welcome love letter to the books and to their author. However that same quality put up a barrier for me--holding up Lee Child's work and thinking so high that we never really see any failings or genuine struggles. Like Reacher himself, Child is portrayed as almost incapable of failure--even at the smallest level. Every choice is ultimately a brilliant one to the point, every sentence of Make Me deemed both ingenious and almost demanding of literary analysis. Sometimes even Child's endless consumption of cigarettes and sugar smacks starts to sound like an ingenious chemical compound, specially devised to unleash maximum literary potential.
Perhaps some of this comes as a reaction to what Martin sees (and I think rightfully so) as unfair dismissal of the Jack Reacher books as purely commercial fluff. Child is, without doubt, a careful, thoughtful, and extremely talented storyteller. There is a deep rigour in Child's approach and a rejection of working to formula that comes through in Martin's chronicle which is a testament both to the quality of the work created and the intelligence of Child's massive readership.
July 21, 2021
Andy Martin: Not Reacher, no way; not Lee Child, no way. Andy Martin’s Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me is another entry in the growing collection of Reacher spin-offs, ranging from a biography of Reacher’s creator (Heather Martin’s The Reacher Guy: The Authorized Biography of Lee Child), to reportage on Reacher’s readership (Andy Martin’s With Child: Lee Child and the Readers of Jack Reacher), to Reacher’s creator’s meta-fictional Jack Reacher’s Rules.
Andy Martin bases Reacher Said Nothing on an interesting device: a Reacher superfan who’s also a Cambridge lecturer and professional literary critic shadows Lee Child while he’s writing a new Reacher. I appreciate and enjoy Martin’s insights into Child’s Reacher writing process and stylistic choices. But Reacher’s more interesting than his creator and Reacher Said Nothing would have benefitted from Martin’s applying Child’s stylistic choices. Reacher Said Nothing contains too many words, too many digressions, and too many reflections by Andy Martin on Andy Martin. Unlike Reacher novels, Reacher Said Nothing drags and bores, drags and bores. Reacher Said Nothing would be better if Andy Martin said less. 2.5 stars
Andy Martin bases Reacher Said Nothing on an interesting device: a Reacher superfan who’s also a Cambridge lecturer and professional literary critic shadows Lee Child while he’s writing a new Reacher. I appreciate and enjoy Martin’s insights into Child’s Reacher writing process and stylistic choices. But Reacher’s more interesting than his creator and Reacher Said Nothing would have benefitted from Martin’s applying Child’s stylistic choices. Reacher Said Nothing contains too many words, too many digressions, and too many reflections by Andy Martin on Andy Martin. Unlike Reacher novels, Reacher Said Nothing drags and bores, drags and bores. Reacher Said Nothing would be better if Andy Martin said less. 2.5 stars
January 1, 2021
I’ve never read a Lee Child book. Never read a book of literary criticism/analysis either. This felt like an enjoyable, if somewhat loose and rambly, introduction to both. I grabbed a Lee Child from the library midway through (not Make Me) and found that reading them in parallel made me think about language in ways I hadn’t before.
So, a good experience. But not one I’ll repeat. Kind of like learning to make mayonnaise when you hate eating mayonnaise. Interesting. Illuminating, even. But hardly delicious.
UPDATE, 3 WEEKS LATER: I have now read 15 Lee Child/Reacher books. Apparently I'm addicted to mayonnaise.
So, a good experience. But not one I’ll repeat. Kind of like learning to make mayonnaise when you hate eating mayonnaise. Interesting. Illuminating, even. But hardly delicious.
UPDATE, 3 WEEKS LATER: I have now read 15 Lee Child/Reacher books. Apparently I'm addicted to mayonnaise.
April 18, 2023
Pretentious beyond belief. The little nuggets about Lee Child’s writing process were fascinating — but they’re buried behind the author’s need to get in as many references as possible to Satre and Proust and Camus and as many other literary French authors as possible. And that’s before we get onto the flights of fantasy where he starts imagining conversations between himself and the characters and the fact that he can’t get over the fact Tom Cruise dared to make a Jack Reacher movie. Lee Child deserves so much better than this nonsense.
December 9, 2022
A brilliant book on writing. As good if not better in my view, than Stephen King's 'On Writing.'
Andy Martin spent a year shadowing Lee Child (who he knows well) and literally watching him write a book (Make Me).
It's fascinating, and very funny. For example, when Child's cleaner does a bit of hoovering, suddenly there's hoovering in the manuscript.
Andy Martin spent a year shadowing Lee Child (who he knows well) and literally watching him write a book (Make Me).
It's fascinating, and very funny. For example, when Child's cleaner does a bit of hoovering, suddenly there's hoovering in the manuscript.
Read
August 26, 2022I give this book five stars for its mission: witness the day by day, keystroke by keystroke creation of a bestseller. I give it one star for its execution. It's an undercover biography of Andy Martin, who's an overeducated bore.
January 3, 2016
Sadly pretentious. The two stars are for the good quotes from Lee Child.
September 4, 2017
I love books that tell me how other novelists work and this one is fantastic because Andrew Link hangs out with Lee Child, the author of the popular Jack Reacher novels (NB: I’ve never read one) as he’s writing his twentieth novel, Make Me. Link doesn’t just watch over Child’s shoulder as he writes (or smokes and drinks coffee and looks out the window); he also follows him to promotional events and discusses literature with him in coffee shops and restaurants across several continents.
I once met Lee Child. He was smoking a cigarette (undoubtedly a Camel) outside the entrance to the hotel in Cleveland where I was attending Bouchercon with my co-author Curt Colbert. Curt went out to smoke and I joined him but didn’t say anything to the great man, this somewhat mysterious star, because I had never read any of his books.
Link, who teaches in the Department of French at Cambridge, is constantly analyzing what Child is doing from the perspective of literary analysis. For instance this fancy passage which so aptly sums up for me part of the task of the novelist: “the point was to connect up stuff that wasn’t obviously adjacent or contiguous, but linked at some dark symbolic level. Adjacent ideas, obscure but harmonious images, resonances, affinities, recurrent phrases/words/refrains, syntactical echoes, the whole vast realm of the intransitive, governed only by association and similitude, all singing out to one another across the deeps, like blue whales miles apart in the ocean, like the distant rhymes of a lyric poem or song.”
Child’s method is quite different from most novelists. He starts each new novel on September 1 (the date he started his first novel) and he writes through to the end (in this case, he finished at around 109,000 words by April 10), intuitively feeling his way through the story, without outlining or otherwise anticipating what will happen. In that sense, he’s the reader as well as the writer.
Some of his aphorisms that I like: Never go back. Write the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast. There are really only two types of books. There is the one that makes you miss your stop on the subway. And there is the one that doesn’t. Ask a question and then don’t answer it.
I’ll be incorporating some of the ideas from this book, along with my insights from the Maass workshop, into my upcoming Novel Immersion class but I’m also considering adopting Child’s strategy for my revision, because that was the way I wrote my original books and, having just reread the first one (St John’s Wood) while formatting it, I can see it worked well. My current problem with revision is that I have so many different versions of the book (he’s a spy, no, he’s not; he’s dead, no he’s not; the house was sequestered in chapter one, no, in chapter two, no, not until the midpoint; the girl is actually bewitched, no, she’s faking it) that I am having trouble connecting all the lines and seeing how all the possible versions line up. If I just start from one intuitively recognized opening scene and proceed from there, I feel I would be able to connect all the dots and achieve that deep resonance that Link writes about.
I once met Lee Child. He was smoking a cigarette (undoubtedly a Camel) outside the entrance to the hotel in Cleveland where I was attending Bouchercon with my co-author Curt Colbert. Curt went out to smoke and I joined him but didn’t say anything to the great man, this somewhat mysterious star, because I had never read any of his books.
Link, who teaches in the Department of French at Cambridge, is constantly analyzing what Child is doing from the perspective of literary analysis. For instance this fancy passage which so aptly sums up for me part of the task of the novelist: “the point was to connect up stuff that wasn’t obviously adjacent or contiguous, but linked at some dark symbolic level. Adjacent ideas, obscure but harmonious images, resonances, affinities, recurrent phrases/words/refrains, syntactical echoes, the whole vast realm of the intransitive, governed only by association and similitude, all singing out to one another across the deeps, like blue whales miles apart in the ocean, like the distant rhymes of a lyric poem or song.”
Child’s method is quite different from most novelists. He starts each new novel on September 1 (the date he started his first novel) and he writes through to the end (in this case, he finished at around 109,000 words by April 10), intuitively feeling his way through the story, without outlining or otherwise anticipating what will happen. In that sense, he’s the reader as well as the writer.
Some of his aphorisms that I like: Never go back. Write the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast. There are really only two types of books. There is the one that makes you miss your stop on the subway. And there is the one that doesn’t. Ask a question and then don’t answer it.
I’ll be incorporating some of the ideas from this book, along with my insights from the Maass workshop, into my upcoming Novel Immersion class but I’m also considering adopting Child’s strategy for my revision, because that was the way I wrote my original books and, having just reread the first one (St John’s Wood) while formatting it, I can see it worked well. My current problem with revision is that I have so many different versions of the book (he’s a spy, no, he’s not; he’s dead, no he’s not; the house was sequestered in chapter one, no, in chapter two, no, not until the midpoint; the girl is actually bewitched, no, she’s faking it) that I am having trouble connecting all the lines and seeing how all the possible versions line up. If I just start from one intuitively recognized opening scene and proceed from there, I feel I would be able to connect all the dots and achieve that deep resonance that Link writes about.
December 26, 2017
Very readable, but there are a few passages where you think: what has this got to do with the book about Lee Child writing his own book, Make Me? Sometimes the answer is, Not much. There are passages where Martin just riffs off on his own little thoughts and stories and Child goes into the background.
I enjoy Child's Reacher series, and remember reading Make Me and finding it gripping. So while it was interesting to see what a huge enthusiasm there is for Reacher in all strata of society, it was what Martin said about Lee Child's method of writing that I enjoyed more.
Child writes, surprisingly, with a real 'seat of the pants' approach. In other words, he starts writing with an idea in his head, and stops when he doesn't know what to do next. He never writes a second draft. The first draft is it. With Make Me he wrote 500 words and stopped for several days. But the thing was, within those first 500 words were the seeds of the rest of the book, only he didn't know at the beginning how all those seed would come to fruition. He didn't even understand what his characters were actually doing, or who the person was that had just been killed.
There are plenty of seat of the pants writers around; most of them write a quick first draft and then go back and revise and revise, often producing several more drafts, usually with substantial changes in them. I've never heard of any other writers who work to Child's method - unless of course you count 19th writers like Dickens and Trollope, who seemed to start at the beginning and write until they were finished. (Trollope supposedly wrote 'The End' to one book, and then started straight on into the next.) But Child's refusal to rewrite anything is more unusual for modern writers, I suspect.
The other difference in his approach is his refusal to hurry. If he doesn't know what happens next, he waits, waits until he can see how things will develop. So in a sense a lot of his writing obviously goes on inside his head while he's doing other things - and this book gives the impression that he does quite a lot of other things.
I enjoyed the conversations Martin has with Child about writing, and some of the occasions when Child talks about his worldview. But there seemed to be rather a lot of filler here. And curiously, even though Martin says he's going to be looking over Child's shoulder while he writes - and he does for some of the time - we discover at the beginning of one chapter that 16 of the Make Me chapters have been written and we've been party to none of this.
Child has plenty to say about writing, thankfully, and is quite happy to dismiss the so-called writing rules of some other well-known writers, including Stephen King (who insists on writing two thousand words at a time, come what may) and Elmore Leonard's famous list of writing rules, which Child surmises he probably wrote to a deadline and just 'shoved [them] down without enthusiasm and without thinking about it.' And then goes on to say that Leonard broke every one of these 'rules' himself.
I enjoy Child's Reacher series, and remember reading Make Me and finding it gripping. So while it was interesting to see what a huge enthusiasm there is for Reacher in all strata of society, it was what Martin said about Lee Child's method of writing that I enjoyed more.
Child writes, surprisingly, with a real 'seat of the pants' approach. In other words, he starts writing with an idea in his head, and stops when he doesn't know what to do next. He never writes a second draft. The first draft is it. With Make Me he wrote 500 words and stopped for several days. But the thing was, within those first 500 words were the seeds of the rest of the book, only he didn't know at the beginning how all those seed would come to fruition. He didn't even understand what his characters were actually doing, or who the person was that had just been killed.
There are plenty of seat of the pants writers around; most of them write a quick first draft and then go back and revise and revise, often producing several more drafts, usually with substantial changes in them. I've never heard of any other writers who work to Child's method - unless of course you count 19th writers like Dickens and Trollope, who seemed to start at the beginning and write until they were finished. (Trollope supposedly wrote 'The End' to one book, and then started straight on into the next.) But Child's refusal to rewrite anything is more unusual for modern writers, I suspect.
The other difference in his approach is his refusal to hurry. If he doesn't know what happens next, he waits, waits until he can see how things will develop. So in a sense a lot of his writing obviously goes on inside his head while he's doing other things - and this book gives the impression that he does quite a lot of other things.
I enjoyed the conversations Martin has with Child about writing, and some of the occasions when Child talks about his worldview. But there seemed to be rather a lot of filler here. And curiously, even though Martin says he's going to be looking over Child's shoulder while he writes - and he does for some of the time - we discover at the beginning of one chapter that 16 of the Make Me chapters have been written and we've been party to none of this.
Child has plenty to say about writing, thankfully, and is quite happy to dismiss the so-called writing rules of some other well-known writers, including Stephen King (who insists on writing two thousand words at a time, come what may) and Elmore Leonard's famous list of writing rules, which Child surmises he probably wrote to a deadline and just 'shoved [them] down without enthusiasm and without thinking about it.' And then goes on to say that Leonard broke every one of these 'rules' himself.
Want to read
November 9, 2025I just read some chapters of this novel for my Narrative and its Mediations course (this week is on the crime story, so we read 'Djinn Patrol ,on the Purple Line' and 'Dangers in Darjeeling' among some critical readings) and I thought what I read of this novel was fascinating. I am not particularly drawn towards writing about how to write, since I believe that it makes sense to learn how to write through reading stories, unless it's like a screenplay or something that is very reliant on the medium that the story is being conveyed (but it's fun to read authors talk about writing, like Isaac Asimov), but I enjoyed what I read out of this due to the same perspectives of writing that the character Lee expressed. I especially like how he is determined to have his writing express how he emotionally feels in the timespan that he is writing a book. It's something that I think I did quite well in my earlier novels, but I think that my more recent novels have become sanitized, in a way, to allow for what I hope are better (aka 'more well-crafted') stories. The way that Lee talks about writing is so deliberate, so carefully crafted, it makes me feel ashamed that I can blurt out 500+ words a day without much effort for most books I write and have written. I could see how this book could be tiring to read in its entirety, but I am very attracted to the storytelling of the book, which is, in essence, the writer, the writer's friend, and the reader trying to figure out the 'who' and 'why' of a murder alongside the detective character, as the writer, writer's friend and the reader are trying to figure out the story itself through Lee crafting the story. It's a very unique story, and I found myself actually invested in the storytelling of the murder mystery itself.
December 11, 2019
Rave review. Or maybe I want to rant and run on about it. Here is a book that hits me in many sweet spots. First, it is perhaps unique. Certainly I have never come across its like before. What we have is a writer who is an academic who spends about a year 'looking over the shoulder' of a best-selling thriller author. Put aside the modifiers; we have a literary critic sitting beside the writer, observing and lightly involved in the writing process. As a person who has written about a book's worth of magazine articles as well as having some training as a literary critic, who also has a reading habit going back over 60 years---how could I not be intrigued and enthralled by this project? In addition to being a fan of Lee Child going all the way back to the first Reacher book.
We have a lot of coffee drinking, pot-smoking, traveling about, flirting in bars, libraries and bookstores. Dr. Martin does not spend all his time hanging around Mr. Child's apartment.
Then we have the conversation: Martin on speaking to Child---"I mentioned the classic structuralist essay by Claude Levi-Strauss and Roman Jakobson on Baudelaire's 'Les Chats'.---It was pure Turing, solving the 'enigma' of the poem, reducing it to code." They go back and forth with this stuff. It is like being in the Faculty Room of a college, only smarter. And over sooner.
There are a few 'spoilers' from earlier books to season the large helping of discussions about "Make Me". While I read that book some years ago (2015), I opine that the nuggets in "Reacher Said Nothing" will only whet the appetite if one comes to it before reading "Make Me".
Recommended.
We have a lot of coffee drinking, pot-smoking, traveling about, flirting in bars, libraries and bookstores. Dr. Martin does not spend all his time hanging around Mr. Child's apartment.
Then we have the conversation: Martin on speaking to Child---"I mentioned the classic structuralist essay by Claude Levi-Strauss and Roman Jakobson on Baudelaire's 'Les Chats'.---It was pure Turing, solving the 'enigma' of the poem, reducing it to code." They go back and forth with this stuff. It is like being in the Faculty Room of a college, only smarter. And over sooner.
There are a few 'spoilers' from earlier books to season the large helping of discussions about "Make Me". While I read that book some years ago (2015), I opine that the nuggets in "Reacher Said Nothing" will only whet the appetite if one comes to it before reading "Make Me".
Recommended.
March 31, 2017
There are two groups of people that are going to really enjoy this book: 1. Fans of the Jack Reacher series, and 2. Fans of books on the writing process.
On September 1st of 1994, Lee Child bought a few pads of paper and one pencil and began writing his first Jack Reacher novel, "Killing Fields." As a nod to his superstition about its vast success, September 1st would mark the start of each new Reacher adventure in all the years that follow.
This book was written by Andy Martin, who approached Child and arranged to hover over his shoulder as Child created his 20th Reacher novel, "Make Me." In "Reacher Said Nothing" I gained an insight into Child's nicotine/caffeine fueled lifestyle, and into his thoughts on Reacher and the writing process. Just fascinating. (He's also a fan of one of my favorite plays, "Waiting for Godot," seeing it 39 times so far.)
Reacher fans will indeed love this behind-the-curtain book, and as a book on the writing process, I'd rank this right up there with Stephen King's "On Writing."
On September 1st of 1994, Lee Child bought a few pads of paper and one pencil and began writing his first Jack Reacher novel, "Killing Fields." As a nod to his superstition about its vast success, September 1st would mark the start of each new Reacher adventure in all the years that follow.
This book was written by Andy Martin, who approached Child and arranged to hover over his shoulder as Child created his 20th Reacher novel, "Make Me." In "Reacher Said Nothing" I gained an insight into Child's nicotine/caffeine fueled lifestyle, and into his thoughts on Reacher and the writing process. Just fascinating. (He's also a fan of one of my favorite plays, "Waiting for Godot," seeing it 39 times so far.)
Reacher fans will indeed love this behind-the-curtain book, and as a book on the writing process, I'd rank this right up there with Stephen King's "On Writing."
May 12, 2022
This was a funny book and I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I read this right after reading Make Me for maximum effect. I read some reviews of this book and it seems like some people have a problem with the writer over-analyzing Child and his books, or putting too much about himself in the book, and I went into it expecting that, but I think they're exaggerating. The author is obviously goo-goo ga-ga over Lee Child, like an insane fanboy, but also an academic, and those two worlds colliding in one person getting to watch a Jack Reacher book being born before his eyes led to a lot of really fun, great reportage. Also Lee Child himself seems like a blast, a super tall skinny British guy in New York who watches soccer, smokes pot and cigarettes and drinks 19 cups of coffee a day split with short bouts of writing and junk food (he seemed to live off Snickers and some kind of sugar cereal during the writing of the book) who analyzes weird things, knows weird facts, and goes on weird rants. A thoroughly enjoyable, unique book.
December 15, 2018
I thoroughly enjoyed this behind-the-scenes view of Lee Child's writing process. Not only does the author observe Child and tag along as he moves around New York and his apartment, the two talk about all manner of things only tangentially related to the novel being written. The exchanges between the author (Martin) and his subject (Child) range from philosophical to humorous, as do the exchanges between the subject (Child) and his character (Reacher). Lots of little tidbits are thrown in along the way, such s how Lee Child came up with his pen name as well as Jack Reacher's name. Perhaps my favorite chapter reminded me of the second volume of Don Quixote. What would happen if Reacher discovered not only that someone had been observing him all his life, but that millions of people knew his story?
January 17, 2022
I really enjoyed this, a fascinating insight into how a best selling author writes.
October 25, 2023
I had been wanting to read this book for some time and it took some searching before I was able to obtain a copy.
I have read all of the Jack Reacher books, not in order and I started in 2009 with “One Shot” his ninth book. I am not sure why I started reading Child’s books, I was into Peter Temple, Joseph Wambaugh, James Lee Burke and John Sandford, so I was probably in the early stages of my crime fiction stage. Years ago when I was a literature snob I would have been dismissive of Jack Reacher texts. I would acknowledge that they are not great literature and it would be on a rare occasion that I would pause and saviour a line or phrase that Child has used. Nevertheless they have captured the reading attention of millions and I happily place myself in this group. Naturally, I read and enjoy the classics and modern authors, many of whom have won international awards for their writing.
Andy Martin is no slouch in the world of literature and he recognise that there was something about Child’s writing ability. Andy Martin has created something new his book is a blend of literary criticism, biography, and fly-on-the wall journalism.
I found this book interesting but my interest did waiver at times and I more perused and browsed than carefully read.
If you have read any of Child’s books you will know that the title “Reacher said nothing” is a common expression used in all his books. For the literary buffs Child makes use of diacope, anaphora, and epistrophe.
The thing I most discovered was the labouring that Child takes over the words, phrases and punctuation that he uses. He writes, contemplates, edits and changes. He will spend a considerable amount of time over even the use of a single word.
He writes the sentence, “The wheat moved in waves, heavy and slow and silent,” It is just before harvest time and he wants to show this by using the word “heavy” but he worries that it is over descriptive.
One astute comment he makes is, “You should write the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast.”
From this book and interviews I have seen and read Child is the type of guy who you could casually have a beer, or more likely a coffee and chat with, without Reacher entering the conversation. Child does not take himself too seriously and can often laugh at himself. He still enjoys his boyhood pursuit of football.
As with Reacher he loves his coffee and, as not with Reacher, he smokes often.
Martin wrote this book as Child was writing his twentieth Reacher, Make Me.
Why do I like Jack Reacher novels? For their pure fantasy. I find Reacher a muscular liberal. If he voted I would say he was a Democrat. He has a preponderance to help the little guy. The hard working, often timid person(s) who are being intimidated and threatened by powerful people. In some ways he is a twenty-first century Mr Darcy. There is a certainty about his books. Reacher comes from the same school as James Bond. You know in the end he will defeat the bad guy and unfortunately in the world today there are too many bad guys winning. A Jack Reacher story is as predictable as a McDonalds’ order of a Big Mac, French Fries and a Coke.
So, do I recommend this book? If you just read Reacher for the thrill of the narrative and you don’t have much interest in the substance of the writing process than give it a miss. If the work of writers is your passion than sit down and enjoy.
I have read all of the Jack Reacher books, not in order and I started in 2009 with “One Shot” his ninth book. I am not sure why I started reading Child’s books, I was into Peter Temple, Joseph Wambaugh, James Lee Burke and John Sandford, so I was probably in the early stages of my crime fiction stage. Years ago when I was a literature snob I would have been dismissive of Jack Reacher texts. I would acknowledge that they are not great literature and it would be on a rare occasion that I would pause and saviour a line or phrase that Child has used. Nevertheless they have captured the reading attention of millions and I happily place myself in this group. Naturally, I read and enjoy the classics and modern authors, many of whom have won international awards for their writing.
Andy Martin is no slouch in the world of literature and he recognise that there was something about Child’s writing ability. Andy Martin has created something new his book is a blend of literary criticism, biography, and fly-on-the wall journalism.
I found this book interesting but my interest did waiver at times and I more perused and browsed than carefully read.
If you have read any of Child’s books you will know that the title “Reacher said nothing” is a common expression used in all his books. For the literary buffs Child makes use of diacope, anaphora, and epistrophe.
The thing I most discovered was the labouring that Child takes over the words, phrases and punctuation that he uses. He writes, contemplates, edits and changes. He will spend a considerable amount of time over even the use of a single word.
He writes the sentence, “The wheat moved in waves, heavy and slow and silent,” It is just before harvest time and he wants to show this by using the word “heavy” but he worries that it is over descriptive.
One astute comment he makes is, “You should write the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast.”
From this book and interviews I have seen and read Child is the type of guy who you could casually have a beer, or more likely a coffee and chat with, without Reacher entering the conversation. Child does not take himself too seriously and can often laugh at himself. He still enjoys his boyhood pursuit of football.
As with Reacher he loves his coffee and, as not with Reacher, he smokes often.
Martin wrote this book as Child was writing his twentieth Reacher, Make Me.
Why do I like Jack Reacher novels? For their pure fantasy. I find Reacher a muscular liberal. If he voted I would say he was a Democrat. He has a preponderance to help the little guy. The hard working, often timid person(s) who are being intimidated and threatened by powerful people. In some ways he is a twenty-first century Mr Darcy. There is a certainty about his books. Reacher comes from the same school as James Bond. You know in the end he will defeat the bad guy and unfortunately in the world today there are too many bad guys winning. A Jack Reacher story is as predictable as a McDonalds’ order of a Big Mac, French Fries and a Coke.
So, do I recommend this book? If you just read Reacher for the thrill of the narrative and you don’t have much interest in the substance of the writing process than give it a miss. If the work of writers is your passion than sit down and enjoy.
January 16, 2017
An interesting and sometimes funny read, but only for people who are true fans of Lee Child and Jack Reacher. The title is a reference to a characteristic tag-line that appears often in all the Reacher books. I have always wondered how Child can write so believably about the American military, since he has never been in any country's army (he is a Brit)--I assumed he interviewed people and did lots of research. But he does no research (he just reads omnivorously and has a tenacious memory) and he doesn't appear to have friends in the military. So I'm still wondering. He also has the kind of mind that notices that Britney Spears is an anagram of Presbyterian and Pepsi Cola is also one of Episcopal. If you want to know why Reacher is so named (he was originally Franklin) or why Lee Child chose THAT name as a pseudonym (a funny story), or whether he meticulously plans his books (just the opposite--he starts cold and figures it out as he goes along), or why he doesn't much like David Baldacci or James Patterson, it's all here. He prides himself on never rewriting, but by that he means he never changes major things once they're down on paper. On the first page of Make Me, after thinking about it over night, he changed "And they would use the air for a guy like Keever" to "And they would use the air, for a guy like Keever." Keever was being secretly buried at night, and the bad guys were doing it in a way to escape detection even from the air. Child thought the comma gave Keever more weight and significance by slowing down the sentence. Even though at this point he had no more idea who Keever was than the reader. He is astonishingly meticulous about rhythms and word choice. There are a number of cute stories--among them the one about the fan at a signing who brought up a copy of his latest book and showed him that there were only blank pages between the covers. He laughed and said that producing books is an industrial process, and there's bound to be glitch occasionally. Whereupon he signed the book anyway, under the note "Reacher said nothing."
December 8, 2019
If you're like me, a diehard Jack Reacher fan, you probably greedily snatch up not only each new edition to the Jack Reacher series, (there are currently 24) but any and every new book to come along that even mentions Reacher or his creator Lee Child. So when Reacher Said Nothing came out I was happy to plunk down twenty-five dollars to procure my copy. After having slogged through all 368 pages, I am not so sure it was money well spent.
The author, Andy Martin, is an English professor at Cambridge. Now, if you're as snarky and immature as I am, you're desperately trying to shake all those Clichéd old sayings about English professors writing books out of your mind. Unfortunately, Professor Martin fell headlong into the stereotype. Huge portions of the book stray completely away from Lee Child and his writing process, spending way too much time on Mr. Martin's life and literary philosophies.
To be fair, there are a few well-written portions of the book that delve nicely into the day to day writing habits of Lee Child, as well as his musings on who Jack Reacher is and why America seems to have embraced him so enthusiastically. Regrettably, those sections were much too few, and far between.
Overall, if you are the type of fan that has to have every product that relates to your favorite author or character, whether good or bad, then this book is for you; if not, then save your money.
The author, Andy Martin, is an English professor at Cambridge. Now, if you're as snarky and immature as I am, you're desperately trying to shake all those Clichéd old sayings about English professors writing books out of your mind. Unfortunately, Professor Martin fell headlong into the stereotype. Huge portions of the book stray completely away from Lee Child and his writing process, spending way too much time on Mr. Martin's life and literary philosophies.
To be fair, there are a few well-written portions of the book that delve nicely into the day to day writing habits of Lee Child, as well as his musings on who Jack Reacher is and why America seems to have embraced him so enthusiastically. Regrettably, those sections were much too few, and far between.
Overall, if you are the type of fan that has to have every product that relates to your favorite author or character, whether good or bad, then this book is for you; if not, then save your money.
June 2, 2016
Thanks to James Thane's illuminating review on Goodreads I discovered this fascinating book. It follows the creation of Lee Child's Make Me, Jack Reacher series (No. 20) from birth to final paragraph. Some academics have written off Child's popular work as unworthy of consideration, but author Andy Martin, himself a lecturer in the Department of French at the University of Cambridge, deemed this over-the-shoulder recording of the creative process worthwhile. I agree. Martin is a Reacher fan as are millions of readers worldwide.
I have not read any of Child's thrillers but as a writer I found this book intriguing. I agonized along with Child as he searches for the right word, rhythm, sentence structure, tone, etc. to produce the specific effect he wants -- only to reread the paragraph a bit later and make a few changes. He is his own editor and an extremely demanding one at that. Some readers will be disappointed to learn that Child starts a book cold-turkey, no plot in mind. For the rest of the amazing story, enjoy Reacher Said Nothing. Be prepared for a fair share of academic, philosophical nitpicking. And yes, I still want to read Make Me.
I have not read any of Child's thrillers but as a writer I found this book intriguing. I agonized along with Child as he searches for the right word, rhythm, sentence structure, tone, etc. to produce the specific effect he wants -- only to reread the paragraph a bit later and make a few changes. He is his own editor and an extremely demanding one at that. Some readers will be disappointed to learn that Child starts a book cold-turkey, no plot in mind. For the rest of the amazing story, enjoy Reacher Said Nothing. Be prepared for a fair share of academic, philosophical nitpicking. And yes, I still want to read Make Me.
July 13, 2016
I really enjoyed the interaction between Lee Child and the writer, and the mechanics of how he writes. For any fellow writer it is both illuminating and fascinating. But I would have liked more on this. I quess as a lot of people have, I read this book for two reasons. firstly I am a Lee Child Fan and secondly I write books as well ( although on the opposite success scale to Lee Child!) To see how a successful writer functions was wonderful. However, I found the author being an accademic wrote too far into this genre. Whilst accademic books are fine, I struggle at times. I felt at points is was academia for the sake of academia and spoilt my enjoyment. I loved Andy Martin the readers voice, I did not enjoy Andy Martin the academics voice. I am educated to degree level but still found some of this a challenge and it was too far removed from the type of book that Lee Child writes to be assessable. However I really enjoyed the fake exam paper questions and thought chunks of the book were fun.
March 5, 2024
I was in the mood for this book! Bought it as a birthday present for my husband, quickly read it secretly before gift wrapping it. I won’t let on I read it first. TBH it was really for me as I don’t think he’ll be that interested in the writing process. But I found Lee Child’s writing process fascinating. It makes me rethink the tedious process I have gone through trying to write a first novel- 3 drafts and 3 years and so many rules and constraints and doubts and worries. I had always heard Lee was a pantser but he is next level pantser! And he only writes one draft! And has absolutely no idea what’s going to happen- just figures it out as he goes along while smoking camels and slugging litres of black coffee. And the odd joint. He’s a bit of a genius though despite literary snobs and intellectuals disapproving of his work. Andy the author is equally interesting and I love the way he has written this peek over Lee’s shoulder as he wrote Make Me.
Highly recommend to Reacher fans and to anyone interested in the craft of writing.
Highly recommend to Reacher fans and to anyone interested in the craft of writing.
November 23, 2015
No Lee Child fan's collection is complete without this.
With no Lee Child novel currently unread I recently discovered that this book ran a close second when it came to getting me my Reacher fix. This window into Child’s world, which documents his writing process in real time, was for me as gripping as any thriller. It was funny and irreverent and sometimes laugh out loud. I particularly enjoyed a line which featured in a paragraph regarding Tom Cruise’s movie portrayal of Jack Reacher. Martin, keen to conceal his excitement at something Child uttered says ‘I didn’t want to jump up off the couch like an idiot,’ or words to this effect.
This book not only provided a surrogate Reacher fix but also indulged my inner English lit nerd with its talk of Derrida, Barthes and discussions of the bogus literary/genre fiction divide. This is a true companion text to Child’s oeuvre and no fan’s collection would be complete without it.
With no Lee Child novel currently unread I recently discovered that this book ran a close second when it came to getting me my Reacher fix. This window into Child’s world, which documents his writing process in real time, was for me as gripping as any thriller. It was funny and irreverent and sometimes laugh out loud. I particularly enjoyed a line which featured in a paragraph regarding Tom Cruise’s movie portrayal of Jack Reacher. Martin, keen to conceal his excitement at something Child uttered says ‘I didn’t want to jump up off the couch like an idiot,’ or words to this effect.
This book not only provided a surrogate Reacher fix but also indulged my inner English lit nerd with its talk of Derrida, Barthes and discussions of the bogus literary/genre fiction divide. This is a true companion text to Child’s oeuvre and no fan’s collection would be complete without it.
January 18, 2016
This was an interesting look into the working habits of one of the most popular writers working today. My first piece of advice is to read, "Make Me" so the spoilers won't ruin the story. If you've been taking writing courses be prepared to toss out everything you've been taught. No outlines, no long character bios, no multiple drafts. Just an opening sentence and Lee Child is off and writing. Early on he seems to have the attention span of a puppy, (perhaps all the coffee and chain smoking?) But eventually he gets into the zone.
At times Mr. Martin gets a little too scholarly for my tastes, but that's just me.
And he comes off as a little too worshipful, after all Lee Child is not the only writer on the best seller list. While it was an enjoyable novel it had its flaws, but again that's my opinion.
So if you like reading about writers writing about writers writing read this book.
At times Mr. Martin gets a little too scholarly for my tastes, but that's just me.
And he comes off as a little too worshipful, after all Lee Child is not the only writer on the best seller list. While it was an enjoyable novel it had its flaws, but again that's my opinion.
So if you like reading about writers writing about writers writing read this book.
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