With Child. Andy Martin

      The CBS studios are like a dream: everyone is perfect there, men and women, the coffee and the croissant and the bagel. The archetype of melon slices. The quintessence of pineapple. The excitable girl with the freckles on her nose. They would all look good in swimsuits.

      One guy was prepping Lee in the green room. Maybe he, for one, got it slightly wrong. He’d overdone the make-up and come out looking orange. ‘You’re probably only here for a couple of weeks, right? That’s what most people think. On the Riviera the rest of the time?’

      ‘I only had two weeks off this year!’

      There was no stopping the orange guy. ‘At every airport in the land, it’s just you and Patterson, right? It’s like – which one am I going to choose?’

      I had to straighten him out. ‘The difference is, Lee actually wrote Make Me. On his own. I saw him do it. Patterson is just shuffling pieces of paper around. In a factory. Lee’s a serious writer. In the grand tradition.’

      ‘I guess thriller writers have all these filing cards on the wall. The plot is all carefully mapped out, like a movie script. I’ve seen how it’s done.’

      Lee was being polite, sprawled on the sofa, coffee in hand. I happened to be just standing there, stuffing in a banana. Like his bodyguard or stunt double. Sent in to bat for Child. I’d often see myself as Stendhal to his Napoleon, Tonto to his Lone Ranger, Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote. Now I realized what I had truly become: henchman to his Don Corleone.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I just read a review in which the reviewer said by page 200 he still had no idea what was going on. Mystified. And the funny thing is Lee was just the same. By page 200 he still had no idea what was coming.’

      Mr Orange was struck by that. ‘Really?’

      ‘I prefer it that way,’ said Lee. ‘It keeps me interested. I get bored otherwise. It’s just like being alive – you never quite know what is going to happen next.’

      He goes in. Cameras all over him. He’s sitting coolly on the tail of his jacket. Charcoal with some kind of t-shirt underneath. No hunchback effect. Not too much hand movement. Make Me is different, he’s explaining: ‘Reacher really likes a woman. That makes him vulnerable. He gets hit in the head. He gets hit in the head a lot, but this time it really hurts.’

      ‘Why is Reacher so popular?’

      ‘You ever had a mortgage? He doesn’t. And he does the right thing. You can’t do it in real life any more. You’ll only get fired.’

      But Tom Cruise was doing most of the hard work for him. Tom wasn’t there in person. The interview had turned into a trailer. Clips from Jack Reacher the movie, talk about the next one. A stream of free association. Book cover, Lee, Reacher, Tom – it was all a blur. CBS owned Paramount Studios, or Paramount owned CBS, or Hollywood owned Random House, one or all of the above, all complicit in some hallucinatory conspiracy, the literary-industrial complex, infiltrated, hacked, seduced, usurped, perverted, shrunk by Hollywood. Cruise-control.

      ‘I’m not an author. I think of myself as an entertainer.’

      ‘Thank you, Lee Child! Make Me goes on sale tomorrow.’

      ‘It’s Labor Day!’ he said, lighting up outside, defensively.

      I was muttering something like, ‘Entertainer, huh!’ With a degree of why-do-I-even-bother bitterness.

      ‘Come on, you boring bastard, no one wants Franzen with their cornflakes, you said so yourself. The book has to feel like a vacation.’

      Sharon shoved us back in the car. She had kids to go and take care of. And a husband, a journalist with integrity (she pointed out, for some reason).

The CBS people had quoted Forbes magazine, ‘The strongest brand in literature’, and a nice line from the Washington Post, the kind of line any writer would die for. ‘Reacher is the stuff of myth … One of this century’s most original tantalizing pop-fiction heroes.’ I couldn’t help wondering, on the road back, what was the worst thing anyone had ever said about his writing? I wasn’t trying to be mean or get my own back. I just wanted to know is all.

      ‘“Brain-dead”. The Kirkus Review. My second book. I thought that was pretty harsh.’

      ‘Mostly it’s that snooty Harold Pinter/Edward Docx line, “I say, old bean, one simply cannot understand what people see in this fellow Child.”’

      Lee was regretful but philosophical about it. ‘So stupid. It’s a refusal to understand. It’s like a footballer saying, “I don’t really understand passing … I don’t understand this goal-scoring business.” I quite like something someone said. Online somewhere. “I hated this book so much, I wish I could unread it.” Nightmares. That is a real badge of honour. I think that was Persuader oddly enough. Can’t imagine what the objection was.’

      ‘It failed to persuade.’

      He was flying to Boston the next day, going to the Red Sox game with Stephen King. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, getting out of the car, heading for a shower to take off all the make-up. Become an author again. ‘I’m pressing on with Night School.’ He knew it had to be as different as he could make it. Make Me was a hard act to follow, which is why he had had to come up with a prequel. He had worked out the second sentence, just hadn’t got it down yet. ‘I’ve got the first chapter in my head, though. The new cycle has started, the new season. The year. It’s all about time.’

      Lee had it in for farmers. All that farming was obviously a front for something (as it was in Make Me). Sinister silos. Grain! Ha! What was really concealed within? Then again, he often spoke like a farmer, cyclically, in terms of ‘planting’ and the harvest. The annual schedule. He had sown and he would reap. Unless …

      ‘After anaesthetists, it’s farmers, you know. Statistically. Who commit suicide most often. It’s easy for them. Like pressing a button. They have a lot of shotguns.’

9 HAVING AN ORGASM, STANDING UP

      It occurred to me, once or twice, that Lee looked quite a bit like a younger Bill Clinton. (Not everyone can see the resemblance, granted.)

      His daughter Ruth had met Clinton once, in England. She had been working over there and she went along to the Hay Literary Festival for a laugh. Bill was giving a talk, pushing one of his books. When I Ruled the World or Me & My Zipper Problem or something. She went up to him afterwards. Pushed through the scrum. Said Hi. He said Hi. Moved on. She called out, above the hubbub, ‘My Dad writes Reacher!’ Sudden silence. He stops in his tracks. Turns.

      ‘Hold everything! This lady’s father is Lee Child, the greatest writer on the planet. Come on over here!’ She was in.

      Turned out the President was a fan, had read them all. (Ruth confirmed the charisma. Irresistible, apparently.) I saw a photo of him reading Make Me too, on a plane, flying off to some international conference somewhere and needing to revise his ruthless, relentless vigilante strategy.

      Another time Lee was talking to this cop. A woman. Mid-forties. Worked traffic in New Jersey mostly. Tough job, tough cop, hard as nails. Hardcore Republican too. Loved Reagan, Bush (father and son), Palin, all that crew. Had no time for Clinton at all. Except she had had to provide crowd control one time when he passed through New Jersey on the campaign trail.

      The crowd took a lot of controlling, they were all cheering and stomping. The cop thought it was ridiculous and no way was she voting for this guy, no matter what.

Then afterwards he comes up to her, personally thanks her for everything she has done to make his day in New Jersey go so well. Shakes her by the hand. She melts. Totally.

      ‘I was actually having an orgasm, standing up,’ she said. ‘Never