Jack Reacher author Lee Child has said that violence in the action series was based on “me aged nine or 10”, when he said he had “two fights a day”.
The author, real name James Grant, was speaking on BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life, when he was asked by presenter John Wilson whether the violence in his books had been based on his own experiences.
Child has written 28 books and a short story collection about the American former military police officer, whose brutal fights with enemies are often described in extreme detail, as he investigates suspicious and dangerous situations after his retirement.
The series was turned into a film in 2012, with a 2016 sequel, and an Amazon Prime Video series in 2022.
Speaking about the books’ content, Child said: “In the 1960s, Birmingham was an emotionally inarticulate place, that any kind of problem, or dispute, or frustration would be answered with violence, of a sort of playground type.
“I mean it was relatively serious but not lethal necessarily, but there was always fighting.
“There was a particular thing whereby, if you were doing well at school, you had a target on your back, and then, of course, when I went to King Edward’s.
“At the time it was probably the most academically successful school in the country, then I had to get out of my neighbourhood wearing the fancy uniform and then back in again in the afternoon.
“So that was permanently two fights a day.
“So a lot of the physical ballet of Reacher’s fighting is basically me, aged nine or 10.”
Child went on to say that there was a “difficult moral balance” between his hero’s violence and the crimes of his villains, and the books were “not textbooks on how we should live”.
He added: “They’re exactly the opposite of that, they are consolations that we can’t live like that.
“Because readers as a whole are among the more civilised part of society, the more thoughtful.
“They know full well that if you track down the bad guy, then of course, the accused has rights. There should be a fair trial, there should be humane imprisonment thereafter; civilised people understand that completely.
“But they also find it terribly frustrating, and so what I’m offering them is a kind of consolation, a kind of fantasy alternative, and I’m totally convinced the audience understands that it’s a fantasy.
“They understand it shouldn’t be happening, but gosh, isn’t it delightful that it is.”
