Lee Child

Interviewed by Barry Forshaw

It's a brave writer who opts to set all his books in a country not his own: in the days when Englishman James Hadley Chase set George Orwell's least-favourite book No Orchids for Miss Blandish in the States (which he'd never visited), a less sophisticated reading public would not be scrutinising the text for errors of detail. Not so in the 1990s, and Lee Child's considerable success with his two US-set books Killing Floor and Die Trying (both published by Bantam) is based on a flavoursome verisimilitude that makes it hard to believe Child is not a native of the States. Meeting the fit-looking author in a hotel room somewhere in the clouds above Broadcasting House, it's quickly apparent from Child's measured and focused method of speech that this is a man who knows exactly what he wants to achieve and exactly how to go about it.

You've written two very assured thrillers in which the American locales have a real authenticity. Why did you decide to take the Americans on at their own game?

There were a lot of reasons, all of them pointing in the same way. I can't say that I weighed things up and made a decision; first of all, there were plot considerations. The size of the plot I wanted to tackle lent itself more to the sense of space that America has to offer, much more than Britain. I'm a big admirer of much British crime writing, but it can all be a little tight, a little claustrophobic, and certainly too psychologically oriented for my taste. I was looking for something more wide-ranging and that certainly had more sense of space geographically. This pointed me towards the US. And, of course, when you're writing fiction you're making something of a leap out of the real world and into a created world. And, to me, this logically pointed towards writing about a foreign culture.

And yet, your sense of locale brings to mind a very British writer: John Buchan. The traversing of landscape, the hero at odds with all around him, the impossibility of knowing who he can trust.

I think that may be accidental, although I'm happy with the comparison. Isn't that a common currency of thriller narratives anyway? Ironically, I found myself thinking of the Western as a presence behind what I'm doing. You know - the hero rides into town, sorts everything out, and rides out. This is your classic Zane Grey territory.

Would I also be right in suspecting a commercial imperative in your choice of locale?

Oh, sure: you have to think about relative size of markets, and that sort of thing. It's relatively easy for a British writer writing about Britain to sell in America, but why give yourself one extra hurdle? After all, it's a fact that British readers read Americans somewhat more than vice versa. So I thought to myself: let's go where the big market is.

What about the American readers who are going to say, "But you couldn't get from Union Square to Fifth Avenue in that amount of time"?

Well, obviously, this is a crucial consideration. Every single detail had to be gone over with a fine tooth-comb in that sense. You can never relax and slip into complacency. Also, I have the considerable advantage of an American wife who's a demon at detail- checking.

Moving on to the actual style of writing, I didn't really perceive a British sensibility.

No, I don't think there is. And, for me, that's a good thing, because it shows I've been successful in completing the task I've set myself. People have said to me, "You must know these places very well", but the truth is I haven't been to them. I haven't actually been within a thousand miles of Georgia. But I have a sort of philosophy or approach which says that it doesn't matter whether or not what you're writing about is real – it's whether or not the reader perceives it to be real. We're sitting here looking down on London, which is a city that people around the world have very specific conceptions of, and, for a writer, it's more important not to rupture those perceptions than to go for a kind of truth that may be more accurate.

You're very upfront about the commercial aspects of being a writer – you don't claim to be writing primarily for yourself, for instance. Would it be true to say that you see writing as a job rather than a compulsion?

Well, you make it sound a little naked when you put it like that. I really do enjoy writing. And to be able to do it for a living is something I regard as a tremendous privilege. After all, if you write what is loosely called "genre fiction", you accept certain externally imposed forms, do you not? And these have existed for some time – you can't ignore them. Let's face it, this is a commercial form of literature. It always has been, since Wilkie Collins. If you don't take that on board, you're putting yourself in an invidious position. It's like saying, "I want to go to the Olympics as a sprinter, but I don't really care whether or not I can run."

And there are different rules for a writer of genre fiction than for a writer of literary fiction?

Absolutely. I have a great deal of respect for someone who tries something radical in literary terms that may fail now, but will be accepted in 50 or 100 years. But you can't look at popular fiction in that light: it has to succeed NOW.

What made you characterise your hero Jack Reacher in the way that you do?

I had a lot of things that I didn't want him to be – and this, to some degree, was in reaction to other writers. I didn't want him to be disfunctional, for instance. Or depressed. Or alcoholic. Or divorced. I think all this has been done to death, and I was keen to avoid those clichés. But my own situation at the time I created him was significant: I'd been made redundant and I was experiencing quite a lot of insecurity. I wanted him to be somebody who'd suffered through having his life turned upside down, but was a sort of positive example. His whole life has been in the army. But when he's "downsized" out of the military, I wanted to show that it's possible to deal with this sort of thing constructively.

You take an interesting approach to violence in both Killing Floor and the new book Die Trying. I found myself thinking not only of John Buchan but Mickey Spillane. You describe terrible damage to the cartilage or whatever in the Spillane fashion, but I felt that you were also trying to be responsible in showing exactly what happens when violence is done.

Well, I wasn't really going for a kind of fantasy violence – I think that's a little irresponsible, in that it's wrong to disconnect the portrayal of violence from its effects. If you say, "I hit the guy, and he fell over", that's a dishonest glossing over of reality. If you're going to do it at all, I think you're obliged to do it honestly.

But aren't you trying to have it both ways? After all, let's face it, we enjoy the violence in crime novels…

Oh yes, of course we're having it both ways. But the fundamental reason is that I couldn't bring myself to write a sanitised, superficial view of this subject.

It seems that women respond positively to Jack – why do think that is?

Well, first of all, let me say that I'm glad that they do. That was impossible to predict. I think that's a little like moving into a new town or a new block of flats – you can't make people like you. If you try too hard, you probably end up by achieving the opposite effect. So I hoped people would like Jack, and, thankfully, they appear to. Many of the books' biggest fans are women - in publishing itself, and the readers. But I really don't know why. He's tough and capable, of course, but he's also vulnerable and perhaps a little bit gawky. His appearance and his thought patterns aren't neat, and that has an appeal.

He's not a superhero, and you don't try to present him as one.

Oh, he's not James Bond. At least, not the James Bond of the movies: Fleming's 007 was much more human. Jack has led a narrow kind of life in the military. He has a small set of superb skills, but he's naïve and rather fumbling, and I think that comes across as appealing.

You spent some time working as an executive for Granada TV: did that affect the way you write?

I think that's been the fundamental influence on the way I write. My job involved presentation, which meant watching every second of the station's output. I was there for almost 20 years. And many of the thousands of hours I supervised were drama. I developed an instinct for the rhythm and pace of drama and mass-market entertainment until it became utterly ingrained. I didn't, however, write the books as blueprints for movies, even though they've been optioned. But there are real dangers in taking that approach: you can end up with both a bad book and a bad movie. However, I appreciate that both books are very visual and pacy. I'm also conscious of trying to keep a kind of intelligence at work behind things. I was very aware during my time at Granada of an encroaching stupidity. The effect of that has been that when an intelligent movie or programme appears these days, it's much more conspicuous than it once was. I do have a certain sort of nostalgia for the days when standards of aspiration were considerably higher. I did want to make the books intelligent. For me, it would be an unpleasant task to write for the lowest common denominator. Neither did I want to make it highfalutin'. It had to be accessible to a mass market, but not insulting to the readers' intelligence.

The new book makes some cogent points about America's home-grown militia and the Survivalist movement.

Well, I hope there's a certain ambiguity at work there. I know it's fashionable to dismiss these people as stupid rednecks, but the truth is more complex than that. They're neither wholly right nor wholly wrong. In a devil's advocate way, I enjoy arguing the alternative side of the case. The bad guys in this book ARE bad, but possibly in the sense that they are corrupting a worthy cause. And the good guys, while conventionally on the side of law and order, operate in a way which is rather oppressive.

Do all noble causes get corrupted in life?

I think they do – surely history makes that clear. By the same token, look at any corrupt or inexcusable cause, and there may be some merit in there somewhere.

There are three love stories in Killing Floor, which is unusual for a thriller.

Well, obviously Reacher has a relationship, but the plot acquired a kind of mirror aspect here. One of the love stories is in the distant past, one is in the recent past, and one is in the present. It became a stylistic exercise to parallel all three of them. That's the book that's been optioned by the producer of Donnie Brasco and Rain Man. I was hoping that by going with a producer who's more interested in character than just non-stop action sequences, the movies might end up with a touch more humanity and intelligence than the standard Hollywood product. In the end, however, it doesn't matter. The books are what count, and if I can give readers a good time with them, I've achieved my aim.