Recalling “Killing Floor” to “Blue Moon”

Mike Stotter and I were thankful to Publisher / Editor and Literary Raconteur Otto Penzler, for a specific book he’s just released, and we got the opportunity to thank him personally while we were at Bouchercon 2025 in New Orleans.

I first heard of this book during the London Book Fair when I had a meeting with Otto Penzler. As a long time reader of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels - I quizzed him about this book during last May’s Crimefest event in Bristol.

The book I am referring to is ‘Reacher: The Stories behind the Stories’ – a book that I was highly anticipating.

So, what are my thoughts once I had a copy in my hands?

This interesting book will not only appeal to readers of the Jack Reacher novels, but also to readers [and writers] who wish to uncover the physical mechanics behind the writing process; the dynamics that powered one of the world’s best-selling thriller series.

Written in a series of short chapters [which were initially short introductions to the limited print run special editions of each Jack Reacher novel solely written by Lee Child] from the first [Killing Floor] to the twenty fourth [Blue Moon], this book is so very interesting.

It opens - On Monday September 5th, 1994, at home, at the dining room table, I sat down to write. An hour later, I gave the first chapter to my wife. I asked, “Should I continue?”

“Yes,” she said. “I like it.”

Child’s self-deprecating, modest and amusing style at times raising a smile, while at others forcing the reader to pause for thought and ponder upon the hand of fate. The combination of the author’s work ethic, built-in self-reliance, positive [and generous] nature - collided many times with the hand of fate as he watched the cards fall, not always in his favour – but he always seemed to play the best possible hand. Case in point – the circumstances of the purchase of his Property in Southern France, as well as its subsequent sale.

Read the full review HERE

After completing this slim tome, including the new Jack Reacher short story “A Better Place” which closes this interesting book – I had a few questions, and thanks to publisher Otto Penzler, who spoke with Lee – I got my answers, which are presented below for our readers.

I closed my review –

“This is the most informative and entertaining book I’ve read so far in 2025. Reacher: The Stories behind the Stories helped recall how much pleasure reading the Lee Child novels had on me, enriching my own life by distracting me from my own [at times] Bad Luck and Trouble.”

I understand the importance of literature - good writing – and the power of stories in helping manage the randomness of life and its challenges.

Stephen King summed this importance in his book “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”.

“Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around”

I managed my life through my love of books and reading, so over to a story teller that helped me overcome the challenges that life presented me from 1997’s ‘Killing Floor’ to 2019 and ‘Blue Moon’ – Mr. Lee Child.

Ali: I first heard about ‘Reacher: The Stories behind the Stories’ in March, from Otto Penzler during the London Book Fair. Would you tell us about the book’s genesis and was it your idea or that of Penzler’s Mysterious Press?

Lee: Entirely Otto's idea - both originally and contemporaneously.  Otto did very limited editions of the Reacher books for his collectors, 126 printed per title, and asked for added-value forewords for each, year by year.  I did them as diaries, really - where I was, what I was thinking, etc, while I was writing each book.  Then he wanted to publish them in a single widely-available volume.  Which felt weird, frankly.  I knew collectors rarely even open the book - they shelve them reverentially and worry about cracking their spines.  So I thought no one would read this stuff, so I made the intros quite personal and unguarded.  Transworld picked it up as a subsidiary deal for the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

AK: I see there will be an audio release, will you be narrating / reading it or will Jeff Harding do the honours again? AND what’s your take on the growth of Audio Books, and the Reacher novels in particular?

LC:  I narrated the main part of the audio myself, because it feels a bit autobiographical, like a memoir.  That was the first time ever for me.  Jeff Harding did the non-me parts, including a brand new Reacher short story we put in as bonus content.  Audio is getting huge now - inevitably, I think, because for most of our evolution storytelling has been oral, and we seem to be hardwired for it.  I'm all in favour - I'm a storyteller rather than a writer, so I'm happy for people to get the story any way they want.

AK: I enjoyed the Reacher short story “A Better Place” that closes “Reacher: The Stories behind the Stories”, so after last year’s collection ‘Safe Enough’ and previously ‘No Middle Name’, will we be seeing more short fiction from you?

LC: I'm sure I'll do short stories now and then.  There's always someone asking.  If I'm around long enough, there could be enough to make another collection.

AK: As a fellow bibliophile - I was amused when you mentioned about renovating the manor house in Sussex, including building a library “…for the first time in my life, I had more shelves than books….though that moment did not last long…” So tell us about your own book collecting over the years, and what is the state of your book collection currently?

LC: I'm not a collector per se - I have probably ten thousand books here and there, but fewer than twenty are actual valuable volumes.  I have a Kelmscott Chaucer - folio size, hand-printed by William Morris, illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones, often called the most beautiful book in the world, and a first edition, first printing of The Catcher in the Rye, and a signed first of The Silence of the Lambs.  Plus a couple of James Bonds.  Stuff like that.  But most of my books have little resale value, except they're much loved by me.

AK: Naturally, there is little mention of the Amazon series REACHER due to the time frame [Killing Floor to Blue Moon] – so what can you tell us about Season Four – and is it based on your novel “Gone Tomorrow”? And what about the spin off series “Neagely”?

LC: Yes, the TV seasons post-date the forewords in the book.  Reacher season four is almost done - yes, Gone Tomorrow - and the Neagley spin-off is almost through post-production. 

All good.  I'm enjoying the process.

AK: Can you tell us a little about the ‘Lee Child Archive’ held at the University of East Anglia [UEA] in Norwich?

LC: Like the memoir book [Reacher: The Stories behind the Stories], the archive is another thing I never expected.  UEA is very much "the writers' university", a bit like Iowa State in the U.S., and I know Henry Sutton, who teaches there.  He asked for my archive.  I wasn't sure I had one, as such - just a bunch of old boxes with all kinds of stuff thrown in.  But they have made wonderful sense of it - it has turned out to be beautifully curated and quite impressive.  I started long enough ago that plenty of it is on physical paper, not just electronic.

AK: And tell us a little about why you enjoy attending festivals that celebrate writing, as you [and Brother & Co-Writer] Andrew attended both Crimefest and Theakston’s Harrogate and you are a guest author at the the inaugural Whitby Literature Festival this November.

LC: I love festivals, and go to as many as I can fit in.  Readers and writers are like my family, and it's great to see them periodically.  I like to meet the new writers - such passion, energy, and ideas - and such great books! And yes, I'll be there on November 8th, at 7pm at Whitby in November. 

Now I'm back in the UK, I decided to do stuff I had to miss before.  I like Whitby - I had a nice holiday there once.  And it's a new festival, so I wanted to help launch it.

AK: Mike Stotter and I attended Bouchercon 2025 in New Orleans, and enjoyed a film on Saturday Night following the Anthony Awards entitled “If Jack Reacher Could Sing” featuring a band called Naked Blue – would you are to comment?

LC: By an outrageous coincidence, unknown to each other, I was their fan and they were mine, and eventually we met.  Obviously we immediately pledged to make an album together - I would write the lyrics, they would write the music.  It took us fifteen years to get it done, but we did it.  A real high point in my life.  Total fun, with two lovely people.

AK: Thank you for your time, and the trip down memory lane with Reacher: The Stories behind the Stories. Your work has always been important to so many readers.

LC: My pleasure as ever.

Shots Magazine would like to pass our thanks to Otto Penzler of The Mysterious Press / Penzler Publishers and Patsy Irwin of PenguinRandomHouse for helping organise this short interview and of course to Lee Child for his time.

5 Min video Below: Lee Child and Andrew Grant at Crimefest May 2025 Bristol UK recorded in Gonzo-Vision. 

The Last Orphan Q & A with Gregg Hurwitz

 

Ayo:                Hello Gregg how lovely to see you after such a long time. How are you?

Gregg:            I am doing well. It is always good to see you. Always a highlight.

Ayo:                I am so pleased to get the opportunity to do interview this evening as I have loads of questions. What I wanted to start of with first of all with is one of things that you seem to have gathered with the Orphan Series is the fact that you have this huge swath of new fans. How did you come up with the Orphan X concept?

Gregg:            Hmm, well I do a lot of research with many of it with sketchy characters. I have interviewed outlaw biker gangs; I have gone undercover in a mind control cult and one of the community's I am pretty close with are former spies or spec ops guys. A lot of friends in the Navy Seals community and they are always talking about these “black programmes” right buried deep in the DoD (Department of Defence). I was always interested in how they ran the money, how they work, how they function. And I just thought, look what if there is a programme called the Orphan programme where the Government were taking these kids. They want to train basically US assets to go places the US cannot go and do things that the US cannot legally do.  And what they want is expendable weapons.  They want disposable people that no one is going to miss. Okay, well that is a notion that is not wildly unheard of. David Morrell played in that sandbox – La Femme Nikita and so that was the starting notion of it. 

What would that be like and what would that kid be like? But one of the big things that turned the corner for me was when I thought what if his handler who takes him out of this foster home, In Evan Smoak, Orphan X is the smallest kid in the whole foster home.  Jack Jones(?) who is his handler his CIA handler picks him because he tells Evan you know look you got knocked down the most time as the smallest kid but that also means that you got up the most times. He wanted a kid with grit. And it turns out that Jack actually loved this kid and that for me is where it started to take on a little bit more depth and humanity. Not only was joining the Orphan programme one of the most crazy and difficult things that Evan is going to encounter to be a twelve-year-old who is now trained to be an assassin, but it is also the best thing that ever happened to him.  Jack is the first person whoever treated him like a human being. And Jack even says to him, and this for me is the key line around which the whole series coalesces, he says to him the hard part is not going to be making you a killer, the hard part is keeping you human. And I thought okay, well now we have something because that collision between being trained to be a killer and trying to stay human with Evan being trained under these very very strict rules of the assassins ten commandments that gives me a template of a series that I can keep writing on and forward and that was the opening kernel for it.

Ayo:                Following on from that did you expect it to become such a well-loved series? Because everyone just loves the Orphan X series.  Did you expect it to go down that route or did you just think oh, just let me write this series and see where it goes?

Gregg:            I think I have been doing this long enough not to have that be an expectation for sure. I think that was certainly the hope. I mean, look, I was afraid to write this book. I had the idea for it. I wrote four other standalone thrillers first. I kept back burning it, developing it more in my head, letting it simmer. Because if I was going to step off on this stage you know and think about trying to create a character that might one day have a place in a pantheon with Reacher, Bourne and Bond I better really figure out what it is that is going to make this unique. That is going to make every plot, and every bit of dialogue, every action sequence feel like that it is an Orphan X not, like it could just be anyone else that has done it. Because we all know that Reacher has a particular feel. We all know Reacher dialogue, we all know Reacher fights, we all know that kind of style of dry wit that Lee is so masterful at and now Andrew. But I really wanted to get this character three dimensionalised before I sat down to do it and a lot of other pieces had to come into focus for me before I was willing to do that.

Ayo:                So, when Evan broke free and became the Nowhere Man so that he could use his skills for those in dire need did you expect the response that you received? Because it just appears that with The Nowhere Man the action went up a notch.

Gregg:            Uh um, Look I mean if you raise someone to be a human and to also be a killer it’s just not going to work. One of the ways that I think of Evan is that it is almost as if he was raised and trained to be Pinocchio, but he wants to be a real boy. Right, I say he never learned to speak the strange language of intimacy.  So, this series it’s really about his process of becoming. Why he was raised totally outside of society. He was trained one on one in dojos, he was drown proofed, psych ops training, he learned foreign etiquette right, so that he could blend in in Eastern Europe and commit all these acts. Hand to hand combat, knife fighting. Everything that he was trained in, but he never learned to know what is was to be real or to be in a real family. And so, I think of him always that he has his face up to the glass and that he is like looking in on other people leading these ordinary lives that he himself can never but at least he can protect it for him. He is like the wolf that is going to hunt other wolves. And so with The Nowhere Man, part of what happened was when he became the Nowhere Man which was one of his operational aliases he put the full focus for the first time, his whole operational ability and strategy and all of that was put finally in a position where it was aligned with his moral compass and so there was greater force for that and greater willingness to do anything he had to do to help somebody who no one else can help.  It is always somebody who calls that encrypted number whose got nowhere to turn but are in a desperate place and they are just being terrorised by another human or group of humans.

The complete interview with Gregg Hurwitz can be found on the Shots website at the following link.

The Last Orphan by Gregg Hurwitz (Penguin Books) Out Now.

The world needs a new hero, and Evan Smoak - aka Orphan X - is here to help in this electrifying new adventure perfect for fans of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. As a child, Evan Smoak was plucked out of a group home, raised and trained as an off-the-books assassin for the government as part of the Orphan program. When he broke with the program and went deep underground, he left with a lot of secrets in his head that the government would do anything to make sure never got out. When he remade himself as The Nowhere Man, dedicated to helping the most desperate in their times of trouble, Evan found himself slowly back on the government's radar. Having eliminated most of the Orphans in the program, the government will stop at nothing to eliminate the threat they see in Evan. But Orphan X has always been several steps ahead of his pursuers. Until he makes one little mistake.  Now the President has him in her control and offers Evan a deal - eliminate a rich, powerful man she says is too dangerous to live and, in turn, she'll let Evan survive. But when Evan left the Programme, he swore to only use his skills against those who really deserve it. Now he has to decide what's more important - his principles or his life.

 ©Ayo Onatade (2023)

Here Comes Reacher!

 

With the Reacher films still a polarising topic the anticipation for the Amazon Prime Video eight episode adaptation of Reacher has been high on many a fans list since the adaptation was first announced. The will it won't it erase the image of Tom Cruise question has been vying with speculation as to who would play the iconic character. Suggested names have been rife online. 

The one very important point everyone has been making is that whoever it is has to be taller than Tom Cruise's 5'7 and in Alan Ritchson they have certainly found in my opinion Reacher. Not only in height (he is slightly shorter) to Reacher's 6”5 but he fits the bill in build as well. Fans of the books will no doubt be relieved. One hopes that this will also stop the constant complaints about Tom Cruise as well. Enough! It has been over 10 years ago (actually 2012) since the first Reacher film based on One Shot was released. 

Based on Lee Child's debut novel Killing Floor (1997) the adaptation has clearly been done to allow for the story to be told in a much more expansive way. November last year I had the privileged of being one of the few who got to watch the first two episodes at a private preview. Needless to say having had a sneak peek it certainly whetted my appetite and I have been on tenterhooks waiting for Reacher to be formally released. I certainly have not been disappointed. Watching the first two episodes again did not take anything away from binge watching the complete series. I have to admit that the only other series that I have sat down and binge watched at one go is Witcher. 

Personally I think Ritchson will win over fans, not solely because of how he physically looks but also because of his acting as well. He has this quietness about him that epitomises the way in which Reacher is in the books along with his confidence and at times weary patience. I'm not going to go into the storyline but suffice to say that if you have read Killing Floor then it will all come back and you know what happens. If you haven't read Killing Floor then don't worry as this can easily be watched as an action film that will draw you in. The tone and pacing has this cinematic presence that has certainly done it justice. There are moments that made me smile wryly and moments that had me thinking that Reacher is hopefully here to stay. Now we have everything and of course look out for the Lee Child cameo. 

This is a rollicking adaptation and Amazon Prime will be foolish if they do not adapt anymore of the books. I hope that they do. Netflix are doing great things but this will surely give them a run for their money. Amazon please don't let us down. Fans of the books have waited a long time to see Reacher come to life and so far with this first series I can wholeheartedly say that there is no disappointment to be found. 

I'm going to let in all sink in before I settle down to watch it all over again. 

Announcing Reacher

 

It has been announce that REACHER will hit TV screens around the world on 4th February in an 8 part series based on the first Jack Reacher book, Killing Floor. 6'4" Alan Ritchson takes on the title role.

The trailer can be seen below.