Is Jack Reacher the anti-Parker?
One problem with spending my limited reading time exploring the past is that I often have no clue what’s being published in the present. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of Jack Reacher, Lee Child’s protagonist in a trailer-load of thrillers beginning with 1997’s Killing Floor, until he was brought to my attention a couple of years back by Kenneth Turan’s review of #13, Gone Tomorrow. In that piece, Turan takes the opportunity of reviewing a guaranteed best-seller to promote the University of Chicago Parker reprints and to compare Reacher to Parker:
As the ad copy on the back of the early paperbacks put it, “Parker Steals. Parker Kills. It’s A Living.” A laconic, impeccably professional, almost indestructible stoic who never went down for the count, Parker was too much of a nihilistic career criminal to be anything but an antihero, but without him the more conventionally heroic Jack Reacher might not have existed.
I can’t speak for Child’s influences, but Turan hit on the biggest similarity between Reacher and Parker–professionalism. Both will do whatever job is at hand, and do it right.
Turan continues:
Reacher shares numerous traits with Parker, including living by a code of honor civilians can’t comprehend, but unlike Stark’s character he wants to do the right thing and invariably does. He’s got a more human appeal than ice-cold Parker, and he cares a lot more about women than his predecessor ever managed to.
All true. Jack Reacher keeps telling himself that he’s a loner only looking out for himself, but his overwhelming decency always kicks in. Parker relentlessly going after his money is in many ways similar to Reacher always going after what is good and just.
Both Killing Floor (#1) and Die Trying (#2) get their plots rolling with ridiculous coincidences. It’s not so bad with Killing Floor, which has a pretty clever setup, but with Die Trying, Child puts us on notice that Jack Reacher is the Jessica Fletcher of action heroes. He’s going to get involved in big, important, white-knuckle stuff just because he happens to be around.
And I’m completely fine with that. That Reacher (in Die Trying) just happens to be helping an injured woman carry her dry-cleaning at the precise moment when said woman (who turns out to be a super-hot badass FBI agent) gets kidnapped by white supremacist militia members spares us fifty pages of Child trying to set up a more likely scenario that leads to the exact same situation. These things just happen to Jack Reacher. Accept it.
Reacher may or may not be an heir to Parker, but he’s definitely an heir to the men’s adventure heroes of the ’70s and ’80s. He’s in some ways the bastard child of Mack Bolan and Remo Williams–he’s got Bolan’s sense that injustice must be righted, plus Remo’s “I don’t really care” attitude fronted by someone who is going to do the right thing anyway. He lacks Remo’s chronic depression, but he does, in Die Trying, have a half-Chiun in his former commanding officer, General Garber.
And he almost has Remo’s superhuman powers. Jack Reacher can put a bullet up your left nostril from a mile away, or beat your ass to a pulp even if you’re Mike Tyson or the Undertaker. And his IQ is something like three million. He just thinks about stuff real hard, and the right answers come to him. Child runs us through Reacher’s thought process to the point where we go, “Oh, yeah! That makes complete sense!” It doesn’t always make sense–in Killing Floor, Reacher tracks down one character by making crazy deductions based on the guy’s taste in music. But mostly it does, or at least seems to at the time.
Killing Floor is a hell of a debut. Some rookie mistakes (if there’s a Richard Stark influence it’s not obvious, but the Andrew Vachss influence sure is) are not a big deal. The whole thing is ridiculous, but I didn’t care about that.
What I did care about was the characters. Child makes you love the good guys. Other than that a lot of them are hotter and smarter than you, they could be your neighbors (if you like your neighbors). They’re good, decent people who shouldn’t have to go through this bullshit, and you want the best for them.
That’s not quite as true with Die Trying, not due to a failure on Child’s part, but due to the requirements of a different plot. But you will love super-hot badass FBI agent Holly Johnson, and, to a lesser extent, half-Chiun General Gardner. And you will hate the ripped-from-the-headlines (1998) militia leader like you hate the happily late Timothy McVeigh.
I’m often not right when I try to put myself in other readers’ heads, but I wonder if some of you who like your crime fiction short and tight might not get annoyed at Child’s style. He can, and does, spend more time focused on a single bullet than John Woo. Both Killing Floor and Die Trying are over 500 pages; not the Richard Stark style at all. But I didn’t mind spending a lot of time learning about Jack Reacher, hoping things work out for the good guys, and praying the bad guys received a very violent dose of justice. Killing Floor and Die Trying are good, fun reads. I’ll be back for number three.
Blind Blake – “Police Dog Blues”
(Blink Blake is part of the ridiculous coincidence that kicks off Killing Floor.)
Posts in this series:
Review: Killing Floor and Die Trying by Lee Child (this post)
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Child is doing a modern version of The Saint, who also experinaced things “just happening” around him that propelled him into his wild adventures. But Child lacks the wit and humor that Leslie Charteris put into his Simon Templar character. I was only able to get about two thirds of the way through “Killing Floor” before I gave up. Nothing about it grabbed me. I’m glad you enjoyed it, though. Obviously I am in the minority, and I am fine with that.
Brian Drake
Hey Trent, solid review.
I’m always on guard when reading first-person novels, and just like Brian up there, had to give up on Reacher.
I’m curious what is more popular with today’s crime readers, First or Third POV?
Rusty,
I think first person action novels are hard to get into, which may be why Child eventually switched the Reacher books to third person. British thrillers have a tradition of being written in first person, but I think nowadays third is the preferred option because when the hero is telling the story, some of the suspense is taken away. You know he lives, because he’s telling you what happened. For whodunnit mysteries or private eye tales, first person works fine, and shows no signs of going away; those books are also written in third person (Hammett used both styles) so on that one can go either way.
For my own novels (which I think y’all would like, especially one called “Justified Sins”) I primarily use third person. I like the way it sounds, if that makes any sense.
I may try a Reacher book that’s written in third person to see if my opinion changes.
Brian Drake
The characters that Reacher reminds me most of are Repairman Jack and Travis McGee. They have a an ill define job that makes them basically heros for hire. Both Jack and McGee are more realistic than Reacher, though. Repairman Jack for example is not exceptionally good hand to hand combat or gunfighting but is exceptionally cunning and resourceful. The Repairman Jack books are in sense less realistic because they involve the supernatural to one extent or another, but Repairman Jack is a more realistic character.
I probably would have the Reacher books more if Child’s writing had been leaner. The books are longer than they need to be, but that’s true of most fiction nowadays. The thing I liked about the early Parkers is there was never a wasted word.
So my guess that some Parker readers were not going to like the Jack Reacher series turned out to be accurate! But I hadn’t considered that first-person might turn some readers off.
Child switches to third-person for Die Trying. Most of the series is written third-person but four titles are first-person: http://leechild.com/faqcontact.php#first_person
And Brian, I just bought Justified Sins for my Kindle. It will probably be awhile before I get to it, but I’m looking forward to checking it out.
I didn’t really dislike the two Reachers I read, but I thought the writing could be a lot leaner and Reacher could be more realistically leaner.
Trent,
Thank you! “Justified Sins” has become a popular book and I look forward to your feedback.
Brian Drake
Great review. I can find many small flaws in the two Reacher books I read, but like you they really don’t spoil my enjoyment. The plots just keep moving forward and the geeky weapons diversions are right up my alley, so I don’t mind the sometimes turgid writing style.