Scala Radio Book Club: No Plan B by Andrew Child
The third Jack Reacher thriller co-written by Andrew and his older brother Lee Child
Last updated 28th Oct 2022
In the Scala Radio Book Club on Thursday the 27th of October, Mark Forrest talked to Andrew Child, the co-author of the latest Jack Reacher novel, No Plan B.
The third Jack Reacher thriller co-written by Andrew and his older brother Lee Child finds the charismatic hero probing the expansive conspiracy behind an apparent suicide.
Gerrardsville, Colorado. One tragic event. Two witnesses. Two conflicting accounts. One witness sees a woman throw herself in front of a bus - clearly suicide. The other witness is Jack Reacher. And he sees what really happened - a man in grey hoodie and jeans, swift and silent as a shadow, pushed the victim to her death, before grabbing her bag and sauntering away.
Reacher follows the killer on foot, not knowing that this was no random act of violence. It is part of something much bigger... a sinister, secret conspiracy, with powerful people on the take, enmeshed in an elaborate plot that leaves no room for error. If any step is compromised, the threat will have to be quickly and permanently removed. But when the threat is Reacher, there is No Plan B...
Mark began the interview by asking what uninitiated Jack Reacher readers need to know about the iconic character.
‘I would say that there are two ways of looking at Reacher, you could look at him in the 20th/21st century, where he started his career in the military, his whole life he had drifted around the world from one posting to another, never being anywhere for very long. And when he left the army, he couldn't get out of that habit. That's the modern-day take. You could also zoom out and look at it in the historical perspective where really, I think it's fair to say Reacher is the latest incarnation of an eternal archetype. He's the knight errant who, when you find yourself in terrible trouble, and you can't deal with it on your own, a mysterious stranger arrives, and he fixes it. And most importantly, he then leaves’
Mark was interested in how the brothers began writing together.
‘As I'm driving, he (Lee) just casually slips into the conversation. “So, I'm thinking about retiring”. And I remember looking back, I'm kind of ashamed, really. Because if I was a nicer Brother, what I would have done is said, yes, you should retire. Because you've worked so hard for so long. You've produced all these books that people have loved. You've helped so many people in the industry. Yes, you should retire. But I didn't. Instead, I said, Wait a minute. What about Reacher? Because Lee and I would always sit around, we would chat, and we would speculate about what Reacher would be doing. He was like a kind of extra imaginary brother. So, I just couldn't imagine not having that in my life. So of course, it was a complete set-up. He knew that I would say that. And that led to him saying, well, I was thinking that you could write with me. And then, if he decides to step back all the way, then I just carry on, on my own. It was a real surprise.’
Mark asked how Andrew and Lee Child write their Jack Reacher plots.
‘In interviews, he (Lee) likes to say that he doesn't plan. But I think what's more accurate is to say that he doesn't plan all in one go, some people will sit down before they write a word. And they will plan out the whole book, they'll write what people call an outline, which is kind of a skeletal version of the book, but it says exactly what's going to happen in each chapter. And at each point of the story. Lee certainly doesn't do that.’ Andrew Explains. ‘We'll wait until we're happy with a particular part, then we'll stop, and we'll say, “Okay, what happens next”, and we'll make those decisions at each point in the story that the decisions need to be made. And I love that because it makes the story seem authentic. They're not just, puppets on strings following something that had been planned out months, or years before.’
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