Can you believe that the 31st Reacher novel by Lee Child and Andrew Child has just been released? Chain Reaction hit shelves on Oct. 20, 2026, and it is one of the best books yet.
To mark the outstanding moment, Parade chatted with both Lee and Andrew, getting to know more about their working relationship, their involvement in the TV series, and whether there are any plans for spinoff stories in the works. After all, Prime Video has just brought us the Neagley spinoff we didn’t realize we needed!
We started off with the milestone of 31 books, with Lee sharing, “I wrote that first book all those years ago, and I totally imagined it. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if one book became such a monster book? I’d never have to work again.’”
He dreamed of a world where, 10, 20, and 30 years later, he would still be doing what he loves the most, but what about expecting those dreams to come true? That was a definite no, as he explained, “You can’t expect long-term success in the world of entertainment. That’s just delusional. Everything is an accident.”
The journey to this success wasn’t immediate or straightforward. In fact, it was a huge risk, as he was out of work and needed to find a way to support his family. Fortunately, he had his brother by his side, with Andrew reminiscing about that first release.
“I remember when the first book was coming out. I went around to everyone and told them they had to buy my brother’s book. It was fantastic! Nobody would listen to me.”
In the end, everyone did start to listen. While Andrew always started out as Jack Reacher’s biggest fan, soon everyone else was coming to him to see if he could get them a signed copy.
While Lee started the story, Andrew has taken over the development of the plots and books now. It’s all with Lee’s blessing, and he wouldn’t have had anyone else take over. It turns out that, in a way, Andrew has always worked with Lee on the books. As people question how much Lee has to do with the current books, he has to look back at the past.
“How much input did Andrew have into the earlier books? And actually, it was quite a lot,” he confessed. “Because, inevitably, when you’re writing, you depend on hearing things, thoughts, facts, and angles, and interesting takes on things, and you get that from people you talk to. Andrew and I are brothers, but we’re also really good friends. We talk all the time, and we have similar interests and triggers, and so the earlier books have a lot of Andrew in them from talking to him.”
This wasn’t by design, though. Eventually, Lee turned to his brother to officially ask him to join in on the creation of the stories.
“When it came time to ask him to join me and then strike out on his own, it felt pretty natural. It was not a massive thing, because he knew it all.”
Andrew followed up with parts that he’d been involved in before officially taking over, and one of those came up in Gone Tomorrow, which was the basis for Reacher Season 4 on Prime Video.
“We’re both huge consumers of trivia and weird facts,” Andrew told me, “And I remember I’d come across this thing from Israeli intelligence about how, in the aftermath of an explosion, they can figure out whether it was caused by a suicide bomber or not. It was this weird combination of unbelievably morbid, but logical and forensic. I told Lee about it, and it morphed its way into the beginning of that book.”
Courtesy of Penguin Random HouseAndrew isn’t the only member of the Child family who has ended up with something in one of Lee’s books, either. It turns out that Andrew’s daughter, Lee’s niece, came up with a character name for a school project, and Lee loved it so much that he used it in one of his books.
Since the topic of the Amazon TV series came up, we did touch on the movies and then this new TV series adaptation that has brought the Reacher we all imagined from the books.
“For all Tom Cruise’s virtues — he’s a lovely guy — he just didn’t fit the implied character,” Lee commented, and it’s true. Reacher has always been this larger-than-life, super-confident guy because he’s physically unbeatable. Cruise couldn’t portray that, but Alan Ritchson has embodied that look from the start.
“He’s another smart, good actor who has read the books,” Lee added. “He understands who Reacher is, and he has the intellectual ability to analyze the character. He’s wonderful.”
The interview was done before the Reacher Season 6 renewal news came through, but it’s true that Amazon has been an excellent partner in bringing this whole genre to life. Not only has there been success with Reacher, but Bosch, Cross, and Jack Ryan have all been huge successes.
As Neagley had just dropped, we did get the chance to discuss that. While the Childs have created the universe of Reacher, they’ve focused solely on their main character. There have been a couple of novellas, but never any official spinoffs, and Lee admitted that he “felt unequal to the task of writing about her because the thing that made her valuable was that she was unexplained. Nobody knew anything about her.”
It turns out that Lee has never considered writing a book about her, and he wouldn’t want to, either. “We don’t know her history or backstory. We didn’t know why she did what she did, or why she worked for Reacher. If somebody said to me to write a book about her, I wouldn’t have wanted to, because I didn’t want to know that stuff. I wanted her to be a mystery, so somebody else doing it was perfect in that sense.”
Could there be some spinoffs now? Lee made it clear that it’s up to Andrew now, so we both looked to him.
Alan RitchsonPhoto credit: Brooke Palmer/Prime Video
“I think it’s a really interesting idea,” Andrew admitted. “From day one, I was fully on board with Reacher. It was all about Reacher; whenever we got together, we talked about Reacher. As I’ve been doing them on my own, I have started to think in a different way.”
He didn’t go into too many details or teases, except to say that “Reacher’s mother would be a fascinating subject. There’s a lot of stuff that tells you about what she did during the Second World War as a kid, so you could get into a whole different world and explore her stories. I think there’s definitely still a lot of potential that we haven’t really scratched yet.”
For now, the focus is on Jack Reacher and the 31st book, Chain Reaction. After 31 books, how do the Childs make sure they don’t start rehashing the same old storylines?
“There are two elements,” Lee shared, describing the process of developing each story. “First of all, how does it start? Because Reacher is a drifter, there’s no reason for him to get involved.”
It turns out that Andrew is the one who has come up with great ways to bring the lead character into the case. The opening has to be neat and subtle. There is a method used a few times that involves someone from his past pulling him into a case, but that can’t be overused.
“The second thing is who the bad guys are, and this is where Andrew and I have a lot of fun.”
If you’ve ever heard of authors who put their enemies into books, you can add the Childs to that list. Well, it’s not quite enemies, but just the people who annoy them. They look at the types of personalities that get under their skin, because relatable villains are some of the best. It creates an emotional investment in the story.
We all know greedy, entitled bullies. Not everyone knows the megalomaniacs who live in bunkers with cats and nuclear weapons.
Brooke Palmer/Prime Video
It’s not just the villains who need to be relatable, though. Every character has to be a living, breathing person who the readers are able to recognize. This could mean a neighbor or a colleague. Either way, it’s something that draws people in.
“If you don’t believe that somebody would do something for a particular reason — and it can be trivial or important — then you don’t believe that they would care. If that’s the case, you haven’t explained it properly, or you haven’t introduced them properly,” Lee explained, while also sharing that his brother is much better at the development of the secondary characters than he is, and it’s something he’s loved about handing the stories over to him.
There is another problem in the books, though, and that’s why Reacher doesn’t call the authorities. Wouldn’t that be the best way to handle a situation as a drifter? Fortunately, with Chain Reaction, it was easy to explain; it’s because of who has pulled the main man into the story: General Turner is already with the authorities, so there’s no need to call someone else in.
The drifter element has certainly helped in other ways, though. Lee went on to share that one thing has kept his novels fresh: “If Reacher had been employed, then that immediately limits what he can do and where he can do it. I felt the attraction was that each book is totally fresh. It can be pitched at a totally different level. It can be a dusty little town with nothing going on, or a massive city. It can be government; it can be anything, anywhere.”
One of the fun elements of the Reacher stories has been seeing how he gets out of sticky situations. That’s unique to the moment as well. He doesn’t have a photographic memory, which is a popular trope in crime books. Nor is it like Robinson Crusoe, where he can swim to a sunken ship to get physical items that will help. Reacher has to think on the spot, and he doesn’t get to take the easy way out.
The two have also never gone back to add something to an earlier scene to help get them out of a sticky situation later. It would be easy to write in that Reacher had a penknife in his pocket, but they want to figure out if Reacher would need to.
“It’s an interesting thing about Reacher, as it’s an ongoing series. Odds are, he’s not getting killed in the book,” Andrew pointed out as we continued the discussion. “You know he’s going to figure it out and walk away, so it becomes more of a how-done-it than a who-done-it. That’s really interesting, and really satisfying. People look forward to seeing what Reacher has to do or figure out in order to get the result everybody wants.”
It’s certainly working. Chain Reaction is now available to buy in hardcover, eBook, and audiobook. Reacher Season 5 is currently filming in Toronto, and it’s clear that there is more interest in this universe now than there ever has been!
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