Reacher Said Nothing. Andy Martin

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Название Reacher Said Nothing
Автор произведения Andy Martin
Жанр Языкознание
Серия
Издательство Языкознание
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781509540860



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with Bronwen Maddox the other day – I bought her a copy of The Enemy! – and she was saying how she had known loads of guys who were dreaming (in vain of course) of doing exactly what you did (the re-naissance thing). So the funny thing is although this is a unique one-off kind of phenom, at the same time there is definitely a universal factor here.

From: Lee Child
Sent: 28 August 2014
To: andymartinink
Subject: Wild Idea

      Cool. Be there at 7.30 a.m. Monday and we’ll head to the breakfast show. (Note Monday is Labor Day – subways will be running a Sunday schedule, but there should be cabs about and the streets will be quiet.)

From: andymartinink
Sent: 28 August 2014
To: Lee Child
Subject: Wild Idea

      See you 7.30 Monday – good early start!

      It ended the way it was always going to have to end. With a burial. Lee stubbed out a final Camel filter cigarette (except it was anything but final) and breathed out a cloud of New York Times number-one bestseller smoke. Leaned back in his chair and scrutinized the last sentence of Personal:

      O’Day was to be awarded three more medals posthumously, and a bridge was to be named after him, on a North Carolina state route, over a narrow stream that most of the year was dry.

      Always good to end with a death, of course. Posthumously … it was like hammering a last nail into the coffin. Or more, planting a gravestone. There was a finality to it. A valediction. But then it was a pointlessly inadequate memorial. He liked anything to do with bridges and routes (so much sheer hard labour had gone into them), but he particularly liked the dried-up stream. So the bridge was pointless too.

      And his own stream, the great flow of inspiration that had kept the novel afloat for the last eight months – hadn’t that about dried up now too? A narrow stream that most of the year was dry. Could that be … me?

      What the hell, it was all like a diary anyway, only masquerading as an adventure.

      He couldn’t hit send just yet though. He would have to wait a couple of days, let it percolate in his head, see what subliminal second thoughts might bubble up. But all the loose ends had been tied up with a bow. Personal, his nineteenth Jack Reacher novel – done.

      Word count: 107,000. Substantially across the crucial 100,000 line. That’s what it said on the contract. Anything shorter and it would be too short. Still, 107,000 was relatively short for him. The Enemy, for example, was a full 140k. But it was enough. His books had been getting shorter and tighter. He loved the beginning, that gorgeous feeling when nothing has been screwed up yet. Loved the ending too, that great rush towards the finale, when it was all downhill. But the middle – the middle was always a struggle – by around page two it was like rolling the rock up the hill again day after day. He’d developed a cunning strategy for Personal though, had pretty much outwitted the middle – he just left it out, fast-forwarded straight from the beginning right through to the end, without a pause, non-stop. Problem solved.

      Anyway, it had been a blast, the whole way – Paris, London, Romford – so fuck it, it would have to do. He wasn’t going to change it now.

      He glanced at the time on the computer screen. 10.26, Tuesday night. April 15, 2014. (Reacher, he considered, would know what time it was automatically, without having to check with a mere machine, but of course he – Lee – was not Reacher, he had to keep reminding himself. There was so much Reacher could do – about the one thing he couldn’t do was write a novel about his own experience. Which was why Reacher still needed him.) He’d written the first line on September 1, 2013. It had to be September 1. Every year. Without fail. Now it was over.

      He still remembered that feeling he’d had when he first came here. The romance. With the Empire State framed in the window, it would be like living in the offices of the Daily Planet in Metropolis: oh look, isn’t that mild-mannered, neatly suited Clark Kent up there in the clouds, looking out masterfully on the world (with lovely Lois Lane by his side)? And wouldn’t his superhuman powers extend to writing too? It was logical. Wouldn’t a writer from Krypton be all-powerful, all-conquering – a Superman among writers?

      It was like a brain transplant – or metempsychosis – or déjà-vu. He must have been that New York boy in a previous