It had never been attempted before, and might never be done again. One man watching another man write a novel from beginning to end.<br /> <br />On September 1, 2014, in an 11th floor apartment in New York, Lee Child embarked on the twentieth book in his globally successful Jack Reacher series. Andy Martin was there to see him do it, sitting a couple of yards behind him, peering over his shoulder as the writer took another drag of a Camel cigarette and tapped out the first sentence: “Moving a guy as big as Keever wasn’t easy.” Miraculously, Child and Martin stuck with it, in tandem, for the next 8 months, right through to the bitter-sweet end and the last word, “needle”. <br /> <br /><i>Reacher Said Nothing</i> is a one-of-a-kind meta-book, an uncompromising account in real time of the genesis, evolution and completion of a single work, <i>Make Me</i>. While unveiling the art of writing a thriller Martin also gives us a unique insight into the everyday life of an exemplary writer. From beginning to end, Martin captures all the sublime confidence, stumbling uncertainty, omniscience, cluelessness, ecstasy, despair, and heart-thumping suspense that go into writing a number-one bestseller.
With a foreword by Lee Child. Andy Martin spent a year in the company of Lee Child, creator of tough-guy hero Jack Reacher. With Child is the diary of their adventures, tracking the publication and reception of Make Me , the writing of Night School at an apartment in Manhattan, the filming of Never Go Back in New Orleans, all the agony and ecstasy of the creative process and the sheer hard work of selling a bestseller. They go on the road together, from TV studios to bookstores, from Harvard to Stockholm, amid literary conferences and gunshows, rivalries and reviews ranging from adulatory to murderous. We meet fellow writers like Stephen King and David Lagercrantz and Karin Slaughter, and dissect the latest novel from Jonathan Franzen. But Martin also reaches out to Child’s legion of readers in America and around the world. He tracks down a woman in Texas whose name appears in the home invasion scene in Make Me ; he goes up a mountain in Montana in search of the only reader who thinks Reacher is a “lightweight”; and he talks to obsessive fans from Europe to South Africa who find salvation or consolation in the colossal form of Jack Reacher. This compelling account of life on the road with Lee Child demonstrates that readers are just as important as writers in the making of modern fiction.