By Chris Evangelista/July 15, 2019 1:30 pm EST
“Clearly, Reacher is an archetypal character,” Child said in an interview. “He’s a loner, a mysterious stranger with no history and no future, someone who just shows up on the day something has happened. He solves the problem and then rides off into the sunset. That archetype has been around forever: in American westerns, in the knightly sagas in Europe of the Middle Ages, in Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon legends, even going back to religious myths. This kind of character was in the back of my mind, but I didn’t have a pre-formed design. I wanted Reacher to be authentic and organic.”
Child added:
“One basic rule that applies is: it’s not the writer who decides whether a character is cool; the reader makes that decision. If a writer tries to force things—or lead the witness, as it were—the result is an embarrassing failure. So, really, I just metaphorically closed my eyes and wrote that first book, Killing Floor, and Jack Reacher emerged.”
