Once in a blue moon things turn out just right.
Blue Moon, 2019
‘It’s totally time to stop,’ Lee said to me over coffee in May 2019. Blue Moon had been easy enough to write. It had a certain fluency about it. He was pretty sure people would praise it as one of the good ones, especially when seen through the misty-eyed lens of nostalgia. But he felt like he was faking it.
‘The minor characters were just machines to get me to the end of the book.’
I hadn’t yet read it, then, but he’d sent me the final paragraph. It seemed the sun was about to set on Reacher after all. Had it been difficult, I asked, to write the ending, knowing it was THE END?
No, he said, looking faintly disappointed. ‘I was close to tears when I finished Killing Floor. I’d been so absorbed in it. It felt unbearably poignant to be leaving all those characters behind.’
He wrote the ending to Blue Moon just like any other. No fuss, no fanfare. No big blockbuster season finale. More the opposite. Soothing, gentle, set to the lullaby rhythm of a bus out of town.
Ten days later he was drifting north with the summer. By chance on a bus he found a copy of the Washington Post. There was a long feature story inside. It said organized crime had been cleaned out of a certain notorious city. A longstanding problem, finally solved. Two rival gangs, both gone. No more extortion. Drugs gone, vice gone. No more random violence. No more reign of terror. The new police commissioner was taking all the credit. He called himself a new broom, with new ideas, and new energy. There was talk he might run for office one day. Mayor possibly, or maybe even governor. No reason why not. So far his record was sparkling.
Not even Lee could fault Reacher’s housekeeping. He’d stomped on all the cockroaches, swept up the vermin, and left the place gleaming. The sky over Blue Moon Town was as clear as his conscience.
But the bell is tolling. The tone is elegiac. And Reacher is gone.
Like Reacher, Lee Child was putting his house in order.
On 26 August 2018, six days before he started work on Blue Moon, now with a view out over the high plains shading into the first foothills of the Rockies, Laramie distant in one direction, Colorado in the other, it was announced that he would donate his archive to the University of East Anglia. ‘Felt weird that anyone was interested. Always does.’
On 31 March 2019 he finished writing Blue Moon: ‘7pm Mountain Time’. ‘Last word: “sparkling”.’
On 24 April he finished writing The Hero, also in Wyoming, ‘my last paid word, on the day Shakespeare is thought to have died’.
On 13 May in London he was named Author of the Year at the British Book Awards: for being ‘a person who people quite like, but above all sells a lot’. He wore a midnight-blue tie patterned in tiny silver stars.
On 8 June he was appointed Commander of the British Empire in the Birthday Honours list: ‘Very pretty medal.’ He didn’t yet know the colours were claret and blue. He would probably buy a new suit. In the meantime he bought a small house on a ‘sweet street’ in Fort Collins, Colorado, for (in no particular order) its ‘more forgiving’ microclimate, proximity to Ruth, and access to legal weed.
On 25 June he received a request from the Folio Society to publish a collector’s edition of Killing Floor. He didn’t yet know who the artist would be, or if they would ask to show Reacher’s face.
Then life got messy again.
On 4 July his mother-in-law died. No funeral: she was the last of the four parents to go.
On 15 July the news leaked that Reacher’s bus had let him out at Amazon Prime, where he would go on to star in his own TV show and some dodgy customers presumably needed sorting out. It was true that the bidding had been aggressive, Lee said, but Amazon were the most invested, had ‘the most coherent and ambitious strategy, with the funding to back it up’.
On 10 August a rumour began circulating that Lee had been invited to judge the 2020 Booker Prize for literary fiction. The outsider was storming the establishment.
But all he really wanted was to get away from it all. That’s why he’d bought Wyoming in the first place. He saw more people on a late-night shopping trip to Gristedes on Columbus than he did in three months at ‘Mule Crossing’. Though ironically his six-foot-four frame stood out in the emptiness much more than in New York City, and should he ever happen to go to the supermarket it was an immediate news item on social media. All he really wanted was to be left alone, to finish building his wildflower rockery, or play his guitars. He’d bought at least two since he moved there: the first a vintage Martin, ‘hopefully right for cowboy songs’; the most recent a Rob Allen ‘Mouse’ fretless bass in maple and mahogany, ‘my most prized possession’. But the industry wasn’t going to let go of the golden goose so easily.
The last time I’d looked in the London Gazette was in search of Harry Dover Scrafton, listed in Promotions under ‘Skilled Workmen’ on 4 October 1929, just weeks before the Wall Street Crash.
But Harry’s grandson made a bigger splash:
Civil Division
Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood
St James’s Palace, London SW1
8 June 2019
THE QUEEN has been graciously pleased, on the occasion of the Celebration of Her Majesty’s Birthday, to give orders for the following promotions in, and appointments to, the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire:
C.B.E.
To be Ordinary Commanders of the Civil Division of the said Most Excellent Order:
James Dover GRANT, (Lee Child)
Author
For services to Literature.
‘I felt good about it,’ he said, when I asked. He was anti-royal on principle, but the satisfaction was the same as he’d experienced at O level, when he won the foundation scholarship at King Edward’s. ‘I’d made the bastards give it to me.’
I complimented him on having skipped the interim ranks of ‘Member’ and ‘Officer’ and stepping straight up to ‘Commander’. ‘I would have declined anything less,’ he joked, imperiously. But when it came to the investiture, no way was he going to retreat obsequiously without turning his back. He’d already figured out what to say if challenged, neatly turning the tables on whichever royal might be officiating: ‘There was no refusal to bow. I didn’t ask him to. Why would I? I think we’re all equal.’ If anything, he thought the royals should be bowing to him. They’d had it all on a plate. ‘The people receiving the awards have busted their ass.’
The sentiment went back to his letter to the Sunday Times in March 1998:
I was staggered by your front page last Sunday: apparently some woman I have never met is debating with her husband and her son whether or not I should be released from my obligation to bow to her. To expect any normal person in Britain in 1998 to feel an obligation to bow to any other person is at best pompous and at worst delusional.
The original letter (‘Hello? Hello?? Let me toss this into the debate’) had been ‘judiciously edited’, with the adverbs ‘stupefyingly’ and ‘massively’ having been deleted along with the writer’s judgement – ‘w-a-a-y beyond absurd’ – on the paper’s sense of priorities. Lee Child of Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria, already felt no obligation towards the monarchy: ‘Never have, never will.’
His parents would be proud of him, I said. But how had his brothers responded?
‘Fantastic,’ said Andrew, when he dropped by the day the news broke. He and his wife Tasha (Alexander) were already planning to buy Jim a ceremonial sword with the citation engraved on it.
David sent a message: ‘Congratulations, James!’ Underneath his email signature was a proud photograph of the Brecon Mountain Rescue Team vehicle against a background of valleys and lakes.
Richard said nothing.
The next time I googled ‘Lee Child’, it reverted straight to ‘James Dover Grant, CBE’. Reality was reclaiming fiction. He had finally grown into his name. And was growing out of his pseudonym.
On 14 May 2019 Lee had lunch in Covent Garden with the old Transworld crew. Larry Finlay (publisher), Marianne Velmans (editor) and Patsy Irwin (publicist): the ones who’d been with him from the beginning.
‘I’m done,’ he said. ‘I’ve written my last Reacher book.’
The shock and horror were palpable. There were three dynamics of emotion, and Finlay cycled through all three of them within about ten short minutes.
First: Lee would come to his senses. He would change his mind. (He wouldn’t.)
Second: What if Lee just wrote the books? No media, no touring. (They’d tried it before. It didn’t work.)
Third… How about someone else doing it?
Child said nothing.
But he was already mulling it over.
A few weeks later he emailed Larry, in London, and Gina Centrello, in New York.
Gina was president of the Random House Publishing Group. Like Patsy and Marianne, she was worried about his welfare. Was he dying? No (or rather, yes, but we all were). That was good. Was he well? Yes, he felt good (spending more time outside and getting closer to nature). Even better. But he could do with a break, they could see that. He should look after himself. He’d put in the hours. He’d done his bit.
Lee wrote: How about my baby brother? How about Andrew Grant? After all, he was Reacher’s oldest fan, had been living with him for a good twenty-five years, if not fifty-one. It would be the same but different.
Gina was enthusiastic. A dream from heaven, she said.
Larry was ‘boisterous’. It could really work, he said, because Lee’s style was ‘quite easy to mimic’.
‘Yeah,’ said Lee drily. ‘That’s for sure.’
There was debate about when to go public. Lee wanted to be upfront with his readers. The publishers wanted to delay, right up to the publication of Blue Moon in paperback if they could. There was anecdotal evidence to suggest that people wouldn’t buy the last book in a long-running series, because they didn’t want to read it, because they were in denial, and didn’t want to admit the love affair was over. They hated the last book. The last book was a slap in the face. Like they’d been rejected and shown the door.
So the publishers dreamed of a seamless transition. They wanted to preserve the illusion of immortality until the last possible moment, only pulling back the curtain when the marketing machine was oiled and ready to go, so that grief and anger might succumb immediately and ecstatically to anticipation and excitement.
In the meantime Andrew would take the gig seriously. He would sit down at his desk on 1 September 2019 and begin work on Reacher no. 25. No plot, no title. ‘Lee Child’s Jack Reacher’, by Andrew Child. Or possibly ‘with’, or even ‘and’, for the sake of consumer confidence – though as Andrew himself told Crimespree magazine in 2012, he, like his big brother, was ‘not the type who plays well with others’. No big deal. Lee’s name would still be up there in lights. He would get a percentage for intellectual property rights. It was win–win all round.
It would be a huge challenge for Andrew. A huge risk too. The backlash could be worse than for Tom Cruise. But there was no way he could turn it down. It was like winning the lottery. Tasha would never have to work again.
‘I feel good about it,’ Lee said, when I asked. Andrew was his little brother. Not quite a twin soul, but ‘sufficiently like me that the natural process will bring the Reacher out in him’. He had ‘maybe 95 per cent’ of Jim’s appetite for books and his phenomenal memory. Perhaps more of a taste for the high life. His perfect day wasn’t sitting reading in a deck chair, but ‘Watching Aston Villa win the Champions’ League final followed by Richard III at The Globe, dinner at The Ivy, and a night at Brown’s Hotel in London’ (Crimespree). But it would keep Reacher ticking over a little while longer while letting him, Lee Child, off the hook. Reacher had finally transcended his creator, like all the greatest mythical heroes, and now both were floating free.
Jane and Ruth felt good about it too. They weren’t sentimental about Lee Child. Lee Child was a business proposition, nothing more. And it meant Jim wouldn’t have to worry about Andrew, wouldn’t have to feel responsible. He was weary of the role of patriarch. Now Andrew and his family would be provided for – if things went well, forever.
Good housekeeping all round.
His fellow writers responded sympathetically, as conveyed by Paraic O’Donnell in the Irish Times (January 2020). Two comments resonated with me, as I knew they would with Lee. It ‘dismantles the fetishisation of the author in such a nimble way,’ said Max John Porter. Like Reacher himself, he’s ‘living his life the way he chooses to,’ said Eleanor Catton. It was no kind of a small deal, said O’Donnell, but he took comfort from these words. Lee liked them too: spot on, he said.
In Blue Moon Reacher rocks up in a city he’s never been to before. But ‘Reacher knew cities’. This one might have reminded him of that other city with no name, that he’d cleaned up so efficiently in One Shot. It had been mapped out perfectly for him, with an old stage manager’s eye for balance and symmetry. The set up was skilfully choreographed. Perhaps the Shevicks reminded him of the Hobies from Tripwire, another old couple busting their ass for their only, beloved child. There were even echoes of Killing Floor and Margrave: Howlin’ Wolf, a starring role for a ‘muscular’ luxury vehicle, and the weight and heft of a wad of cash, thumping and bouncing and fluttering.
It’s like the writer is revisiting old haunts, taking leave of loyal friends and well-worn mantras, getting in a last round of drinks before riding off into the sunset. How hard could it be? Not bad for an old guy. The same but different. The law moves slow.
The body count is high. Very high. But so too is the level of compassion. The stealthy avenger – peak Reacher, ‘steady, calm, amused, predatory, unhinged’ – with his preternatural sense of hearing, his acute sense of smell and his quasi-divine peripheral vision, is as exacting as ever in executing those logical imperatives, both mental and physical, while at the same time being the kindest, most considerate man to walk the face of the earth.
‘Who are you?’ someone asks. Which means he gets to say, one last time (in his original incarnation): ‘The 110th Special MP.’ But deep in his soul, looking out from behind his eyes, is a lonely boy from Birmingham: Reacher’s alter ego and constant companion, Lee Child. The guy who respects an old machinist like Aaron Shevick, ‘cutting things by eye and feel to a thousandth of an inch’. The guy whose previous life had been highly regimented, whose work ethic was indomitable, and whose obsessive passion for semantics (and punctuation) informs so many of Reacher’s most inspired insights.
In Blue Moon, Reacher is hanging with a bunch of musicians, just like Lee was while he was writing it. Reacher recruits them to his cause, just like Lee does. Towards the climax, Reacher finds himself looking out on the city from a high-rise hotel room, just like the little boy in that never-forgotten picture book at Elmwood Library, making sense of the mystery he has been charged with solving even while having a tear-jerking conversation about children, love and marriage. Turns out it all hinges on how you interpret the Ukrainian word for ‘nest’, or ‘hive’, or ‘burrow’. Which leads him to ‘penetrate the innermost lair’ of his prey, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Granada’s central control room.
Death was always going to come knocking in the middle of the movie. In The Enemy, the ‘emotionally feminine’ Lee Child chooses Josephine Reacher as his mouthpiece. In Blue Moon, he chooses theatre-loving Abby.
We’ll go back to your place tonight, Reacher says. ‘For how long?’ Abby asks.
He said, ‘What would be your answer to that question?’
She said, ‘I guess not forever.’
‘That’s my answer too. Except my forever horizon is closer than most. Full disclosure.’
‘How close?’
He looked out the window, at the street, at the brick, at the afternoon shadows. He said, ‘I already feel like I’ve been here forever.’
Abby doesn’t want to go with him. Why not? Reacher asks.
‘Seems to me I have a choice of two things. Either a good memory with a beginning and an end, or a long slow fizzle, where I get tired of motels and hitchhiking and walking. I choose the memory. Of a successful experiment. Much rarer than you think. We did good, Reacher.’
Lee wrote to me.
‘I have Abby talking to Reacher. But really it’s my own message to the world.’