He’s a Wanted Man, and not just by the police

Forget Fifty Shades’ sleazy hero Christian Grey, writes John Daly. Jack Reacher is the guy every man wants to be, and every woman wants to be with

AFTER a summer where millions learned to love the whip via the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon, the autumn brings a very different kind of literary hero — Jack Reacher, a “big man with nice eyes” who kills with his bare hands. He’s the kind of guy every man wants to be, and every woman … well, just wants.

A Reacher novel is bought somewhere around the world every four seconds, and despite the frequent graphic violence, has a huge and growing female readership. The latest book, A Wanted Man — number 16 from author Lee Child — brings more unrestrained action from this cool, clean hero, elevating his mythical status with a million more of us paunchy, middle-aged men.

Weighing in at 230 pounds of rippling muscle, he’s 6’ 5”, with dirty blond hair and ice blue eyes — causing many to raise eyebrows at the choice of a 5’ 7” Tom Cruise to play him in the forthcoming movie Jack Reacher.

“His arms, so long, gave him a greyhound’s grace even though he was built like the side of a house. And his hands, giant battered mitts that bunched into fists the size of footballs.”

If you’re helpless in the face of evil and with no support from cops or the system, Reacher is the kind of man you want in your corner — someone with little respect for civilised protocols whose righteous morality allows brutal reprisal as an acceptable solution, when none others are available. One of his hospitalised victims describes him best: “He doesn’t care about the law; he doesn’t care about proof. He only cares about what’s right.”

Reacher’s loner hero is no modern invention, and even dates beyond the heroic western cowboy who cleans up the town before riding off into a distant sunset. “He has the stuff of the medieval errant knight about him,” says Child. “He’s the noble loner who’s been around in one form or another for 2,000 years.”

A wanderer, drifting from town to town, using his training as a former military policeman to ruthlessly unravel even the most organised enemy. Reacher doesn’t wear a watch, nor carry a mobile phone, preferring to rely on his body clock for punctuality and public phone boxes for communication.

He’s intelligent, with a knowledge of square roots and factors, military weapons systems, covert intelligence services and the inner workings of Washington politics. As a West Point graduate, he’s well up on killing with knives, guns, fists, or even a simple biro if the need arises. Yet, at heart, Reacher is an old fashioned kind of guy who picks the names of baseball players for an alias.

Reacher is a very different creature to those of us saddled with heavy mortgages, school fees and the petty whims of tyrant bosses. Living on his meagre army pension and whatever manual work he finds along the way, he drinks coffee by the gallon, eats artery-choking specials at diner counters and sleeps in cheap motels. He’s a man perpetually on the move, but with no specific direction. Relying on his thumb for lifts, he goes wherever the driver is heading — another town, another world of pain for the people who get in his way.

He’s not big on commitment, is our Jack, with more than a few female hearts saddened along the way. “Reacher is the kind of man women might like to have walk up to their door and stay a couple of days, and then leave,” said Child. “But he likes and respects women, that comes through.”

Often, in fact, the females are just a resourceful as Reacher: “Why should they always be bimbos needing rescuing? I write women as strong creatures every bit as competent as Reacher, and sometimes more so.”

If there is a poetry to Child’s writing, it’s surely in the fight scenes. “He put all his weight on his back foot and lined up a straight drive aimed for my face. It was going to be a big blow. It would have hurt me if it had landed.

“But before he let it go I stepped in and smashed my right heel into his right kneecap. The knee is a fragile joint. Ask any athlete. His patella shattered and his leg folded backward. Exactly like a regular knee joint, but in reverse. He screamed, real loud. I stepped back and smiled.”

Not a moment’s hesitation or guilt from a man guided by pure instinct and the utter conviction that what he’s doing is right.

“He doesn’t change whatever happens to him, he’s the same at the end as he was at the beginning,” says Child. “He doesn’t learn anything, because he knew it all to start with.”