That's good news because I liked Series 1 so much I watched it twice. And I'm looking forward to seeing how they adapt Bad Luck and Trouble for the screen. I think it's a good choice for that because there's a whole team of bad ass people to enjoy in it - not least Frances Neagley who always adds value, both in the books as well as in the TV series.
As to which book they're adapting for Series 3, I definitely would have some preferences. Die Trying would be good, I think. The book is notable for a sniping scene in which all the components of what make an effective sniper shot are lovingly detailed over 9 pages. Meanwhile the love scenes are about a paragraph or two long at most. Which is to say if you can expect something described with pornographic intensity in a Jack Reacher book, it's going to be shooting more than actual sex. 😂 But also there's cult-related shenanigans, where the cult is a militia-type set up in a massive compound, and Jack Reacher has to fight the entire cult. Delightful!
Without Fail might also not be a bad choice. Someone wants to assassinate the Vice President of the United States. A secret service agent - who dated Reacher's late brother Joe - asks Reacher for help. Of course they wind up in bed together. It's kind of a weird, sad love affair because Joe is very much still in the room. But I like the story for that reason, because it's therefore also about Reacher's relationship with his dead brother. Adds a little depth to the character.
Persuader has its moments. It's fun to read about Reacher infiltrating a drugs gang. I wasn't so keen on the backstory to his Army days in this book. But there's also some righteous beatdowns issued to some people who deserve righteous beatdowns, and Reacher sneaking around while pretending to be a bodyguard for the drugs gang is pretty entertaining. I think this book would be pretty good on the screen.
The Enemy is a weird one. I kind of like it and don't like it. I like all the stuff about Reacher's mother - I even shed a little tear reading some of that. But I feel like the rest of the story rambles a little bit around that. Maybe I'd like the bit about Reacher's mother dropped into the adaptation of another book, if there was space and time for that.
The Hard Way would be enjoyable, not least because Reacher goes to England! I enjoy Lee Child being English, writing Reacher as an American, having American takes on England. It's the kind of cultural double take I find delicious when it's done properly. And it mostly manages to avoid the theme park Britain problem which I often rail about here.
Gone Tomorrow has an opener that is probably stronger than the rest of the book. Reacher has been trained to identify potential suicide bomber behaviours on public transport. He thinks he spots someone who meets the profile, and tries to engage with them. It doesn't go how you think it might go. I don't think the rest of the book matches the opener in terms of sheer tension. But I can see that being adapted precisely because the first few chapters are so strong.
61 Hours felt like Lee Child maybe wanting to kill off Reacher. Like a Reichenbach Falls moment for the series. But I also really like it because it's not just the baddies Reacher has to contend with, but also the cold and the snow. On the other hand I can imagine it would be a PITA to shoot that precisely because of the wintry setting. So I can see why it might not be an immediate choice for a screen adaptation.
Personal has Reacher trying to stop another assassin, and there's another trip to Blighty.
Night School is probably my favourite of the novels set in Reacher's Army days. Not least because it's the one I always think about when rightwing eejits on social media who assume Jack Reacher must be as big of a bigot as they are, try to name themselves after the character. Whereupon I always think about this book, the book in which Jack Reacher happily beats up entire gangs of neo-Nazis with his ham-sized fists and... Well, I won't spoil the ending, but let's just say it comprehensively answers the age old question of "if you could go back in time and kill Hitler in order to save millions of people, would you do it?" Jack Reacher-style. 😂
The Midnight Line is better than you might assume a Jack Reacher novel has a right to be, mainly because it turns into a surprisingly insightful look into the social and emotional dynamics of drug addiction, including a well informed, well grounded take on the opioid crisis in American society. I know some people dislike this book, but I honestly was very surprised by it in a good way. And also Jack Reacher puts a bad guy into a tumble dryer, so all is still well with the world. 😂
I know some people didn't like Blue Moon, but I liked it. Again, surprisingly topical in terms of how it takes on fake news, astroturfing and so on. Plus Jack Reacher and some other people have to storm a heavily defended building, and that's always fun!
I'm discounting One Shot because it was already adapted for the Tom Cruise film, and ditto Never Go Back. Although there is nothing stopping them remaking either of those two for TV, and I think that Never Go Back in particular didn't quite work when adapted for film. It's not just that Tom Cruise doesn't look like Reacher. They took big liberties with the story, and I didn't feel it was as good as either the first Tom Cruise outing, or the book. Maybe they can give either of those two another go with Ritchson?
I'm not counting the later co-written Reacher novels. Those are steadily improving, but I'm not as gripped by them. I pretty much inhaled everything up to and including Blue Moon in one or two sittings, sometimes reading late into the night at speed to finish the books. And I don't like every single one of those books evenly - I have my preferences, which you can tell from what I've omitted to discuss. But since then it's taken me a lot longer to work through the recent books. I'm still going to read them, but my expectations are lower. And some of the plots of those get very tangled indeed. Maybe a little too tangled for an easy screen adaptation.
