Looking For a Good Book

I love reading introductions. One of my favorite parts when reading a collection of short stories or an anthology, is reading the editor or author’s introduction to each story. Same goes for novels, biographies, histories, etc. I think it’s because this is the place where we really get the author’s voice. Not the author writing a character or the author wrapped up in plot, but the author, reflecting, reminiscing. In introductions to books and stories, we can learn things – why was the work written, where was it written, what was the inspiration, and a plethora of other information that may not exactly be useful by can certainly be interesting. And here we have a book that is nothing BUT introductions!

I’m new to the Reacher franchise – brought here by the Amazon series which I’ve greatly enjoyed – but I’ve been aware of them and their success for a long time. Watching the series, and now reading about the books from the author, I’m much more interested in reading the books themselves.

In his introduction – yes, there’s an introduction to a book which collects introductions – author Lee Child explains how this book came about. Entrepreneur Otto Penzler (a name which should be familiar to many readers of adventure and pulp fiction) wanted to put out a limited edition collection of specially bound Reacher books and had asked Mr Child to write an introduction to each of the books to make one more reason for fans to want to shell out big bucks for the nice reprints. This now collects those introductions.

Mr Child tries to be self-effacing and come off as a regular guy who got lucky, which may have been the case when he got started, but having homes on different continents? – yeah, that’s not regular guy stuff. That’s what you expect from a bestselling author of action novels.

But I did appreciate the insight to the process. Child makes it clear that his process is to simply start writing. He doesn’t make outlines, but he might have a general idea as to what Reacher’s conflict or obstacle is going to be. This means Child understands his format and can feel the rising action as he goes. To prove he doesn’t write from an outline, in one introduction he notes that he had an observer watch him as he wrote one of the novels. (Yes, that sounds a bit odd, but apparently it sounded odd to Lee Child as well.)

This isn’t your usual book and fans hoping to read more Reacher may be disappointed (however, my ARC did hint at a surprise that wasn’t in the advance copy but may be in the final edition) but true fans of the series and fans of author notes will delight.

EDIT: After reading the book and writing the review, the publisher offered an updated copy which includes an original Reacher short story! This story has everything you look for in a Reacher novel – Reacher making a connection, Reacher stepping in to help and beating some bad guys up, Reacher spending some time with the connection, Reacher going his own way. It’s all here, just in condensed form.

Now, even if you’ve read all these introductions before, if you’re a Reacher fan, you are most definitely going to want to pick up this book just for the new Reacher story!

Looking for a good book? Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories, by Lee Child, is just what it says it is in the title – how the books were written, where some of the ideas and characters came from, as well as some anecdotes by and about Lee Child himself.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories

author: Lee Child

publisher: Mysterious Press

ISBN: 9781613167069

hardcover, 192 pages