Jack Reacher has been astride the American literary landscape, stumbling upon nefarious plots and dispatching evildoers, through 26 books and 25 years — and still he has his skeptics. A 6-foot-5, 250-pound ex-Army major, he travels the country carrying nothing but a toothbrush, passport and ATM card — plus an encyclopedic knowledge of weapons and hand-to-hand combat, a Sherlock Holmesian command of arcane but invaluable details and an uncanny knack for telling time without a watch. So sure, Reacher might strain credulity, especially when Hollywood could find no more likely actor to play him than the tiny if feisty Tom Cruise.
But now, with Amazon’s new series, based on the novel “Killing Floor,” those doubts can be put to rest, because: Alan Ritchson. The actor is 37, which is far too young, or would be if “Killing Floor” were happening now, because Reacher was born in 1960, which makes him way too old to be hitchhiking around the country, knocking out terrorist cells with his bare hands. But “Killing Floor” was Lee Child’s first Reacher book, published in 1997, when the big guy was, that’s right, 37. At 6-foot-3, Ritchson is a little short, but the few inches he’s missing in height he probably makes up for in muscle, as anyone can see when the man takes a shower … wowza. The point is, we now have proof that there can be a man of Reacher’s stature with Reacher’s moves. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Then again, the outlandishness of the Reacher books is what makes them so fun, grounded as they are in the character’s outrageously detailed knowledge of every element that factors into each plot. Despite his signature statement, “I said nothing” (or, in the third-person novels, “Reacher said nothing”), he invariably elaborates to such a ludicrous extent that you’re subdued into believing anything. After that, it’s so much easier to root for the human superhero who rights wrongs wherever he finds them (and he finds them wherever he goes), no matter how many bodies he leaves in his wake and no matter how unlikely the maneuvers by which good — battered and beaten but unbroken — conquers evil.
The uninitiated (and there must be at least two dozen left in North America) may wonder which Reacher book to read first. The best? The first one published? The first chronologically (because occasionally the series circles back to fill in Reacher's backstory)? Every reader seems to have an answer, and after a scientific survey of global opinion and the application of the rules of ranked choice voting, here are the results:
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1. ‘Killing Floor’
First in the series, fourth in chronological order
In the book that launched the series, Reacher arrives by Greyhound in Margrave, a fictional Georgia town where his brother once told him an actual blues musician, Blind Blake, might’ve died. (Though Child is a Brit, he knows his American blues.) Reacher is immediately charged with a recently discovered murder, because only a stranger would commit murder in Margrave, and Reacher is the only stranger in Margrave. What’s even more shocking, in every sense: The murdered man turns out to be Reacher’s brother! Who, though also a stranger, can’t be the murderer … because he’s dead. And that’s only the beginning.
2. ‘Persuader’
Seventh in the series, 10th in chronological order
This is a book with a bonus, as the plot — which involves Reacher working unofficially with the DEA to infiltrate a drug-smuggling operation masquerading as an Oriental carpet business, only to discover that the kingpin’s housekeeper is also an undercover federal agent trying to infiltrate an arms-smuggling operation — oh, right, the plot … brings back a villain who, 10 years earlier, was shot point-blank three times by Reacher, fell 120 feet onto rock, bounced into the ocean and disappeared. A Persuader, by the way, is a gun, and “nothing on earth would mask a Persuader firing a Brenneke Magnum,” which is ammunition. So, Continuing Ed. In this book, we also encounter Reacher the Wag: “I caught him with a wild left in the throat. It was a solid punch, and a lucky one. But not for him. It crushed his larynx. He went down on the floor again and suffocated. It was reasonably quick. About a minute and a half. There was nothing I could do for him. I’m not a doctor.”
3. ‘Running Blind’
Fourth in the series, seventh in chronological order
In the U.K., this book was called “The Visitor,” which was deemed too alien-adjacent for American readers. In a plot so complicated that it will leave you longing for the simplicity of opera, what’s most noteworthy is the method of the serial murderer, who leaves her (oops, spoiler) victims in bathtubs filled with army-issue camouflage paint. Through her hypnotizing prowess, she has made her victims suffocate by swallowing their own tongues, which, no matter what the Internet might tell you, my husband informs me cannot be done, however hard he tries.
4. ‘Bad Luck and Trouble’
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Eleventh in the series, 13th chronologically
As with “The Blues Brothers” this book gets the band back together, i.e., the elite ex-Army investigators Reacher once led, who are being picked off one by one. Sounding the alarm is Frances Neagley, introduced in the sixth Reacher novel, “Without Fail,” a woman with the curious condition, haphephobia, an intense, irrational fear of being touched, which means, whatever the chemistry, no sex. That’s a welcome revelation; though Reacher has any number of lights-off sexual encounters, his more detailed love scenes are cringey. As Child puts it, “Writing sex scenes is by far, the hardest and most ridiculous thing a writer can ever do. It’s virtually impossible to get it done with any plausibility.”
5. ‘One Shot’
Ninth in the series, 11th in chronological order
A former Army infantry sniper is arrested for shooting five victims with six shots. But, as we learn, the military sniper’s creed is: “One shot, one kill.” (Of course military snipers have a creed.) So, what sort of sniper misses a target? Reacher wonders, so we do, too — and darned if our curiosity doesn’t lead us to a Russian gang masquerading as legitimate business executives, with an 80-year-old capo who wanted one of those five victims dead. Come to think of it, didn’t the villain in “Running Blind” kill many to muddy the murder of one intended victim? Extra points.
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6. ‘Worth Dying For’
Fifteenth in the series, 17th chronologically
A small army of ex-Cornhusker linemen are bodyguards of the evil owner of a trucking empire in rural Nebraska, but out of respect for the American football tradition, Child spares them early death. Even so, he doles out a whole football season’s worth of crippling injuries. Human trafficking, Italian American mobsters, Iranian and Arab gang bosses — no one would suspect such nefariousness in the innocent Plains state. However, the fact that duct tape is integral to the plot — and not for the last time! — does make a certain geographical sense.
7. ‘Gone Tomorrow’
Thirteenth in the series, 15th chronologically
Reacher is on a New York City subway train when he spots a woman who shows all the hallmarks of an incipient suicide bomber. When he approaches her, she shoots herself. So, a suicide but not a bomber. This is just the first of many miscalculations that lead Reacher to the dilemma of having three people to kill but just one bullet — but once again duct tape, good for strapping a knife to a bare back, does the trick.
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8. ‘Without Fail’
Sixth in the series, ninth chronologically
Here we have a reprise of the blues (Reacher hitches a ride with musicians to Atlantic City), his brother Joe (killed off in “Killing Floor,” whose Secret Service agent girlfriend hires Reacher to conduct a “security audit”) and Neagley, the untouchable former colleague (who’s only a reprise if you read the books in this order, because she’s actually introduced here). This novel is notable for taking place in more states than any other book: New Jersey, North Dakota, Minnesota, Colorado and Wyoming, with allusions to Oregon and Idaho.
9. ‘The Affair’
Sixteenth in the series, third chronologically
Despite the ominous title, which suggests we might be subjected to more cringey sex, the affair in this prequel turns out to be one between a senator and an intern, launching a coverup that devolves into multiple murders involving the senator’s son, and compelling Reacher to compromise his career, which ends as the novel does, with Reacher — a bloodied, battered giant, duct tape playing its perennial supporting role on his broken nose — implausibly hitchhiking toward “Killing Floor.”
10. ’61 Hours'
Fourteenth in the series, 16th chronologically
Where to begin? On a bus with a bunch of senior citizens, spinning out of control on an icy road in South Dakota. At once the most enjoyable and most improbable plot of all, this one involves a corrupt police force, an abandoned military compound, tunnels full of methamphetamines, a Latin American drug lord named Plato, Russian gangsters and one of the largest prisons in the United States. As some of Plato’s henchmen pump jet fuel into the tunnels, where Reacher is wrestling with Plato, his other henchmen drop a flare down the shaft, igniting an explosion of near-nuclear proportions. How could our hero possibly survive such a blast, we’re left to wonder — but not for long, because Lee Child publishes one book per year. And that may be the most improbable thing of all.
Ellen Akins is the author of four novels and a collection of stories, “World Like a Knife.”
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