Jack Reacher has never needed a smartphone, a GPS, or even a permanent address to get the job done. For three decades, Lee Child's wandering former military cop has relied on his sharp mind and his fists, and that's been more than enough. But the world has changed, and in Chain Reaction, the latest thriller in the bestselling series, Reacher faces a foe that's a world away from the diner in Margrave, Georgia: artificial intelligence, data centers, and the tech bros who run them.
In an exclusive chat with Collider, Lee and Andrew Child—the brother duo behind the series—explained how Reacher's famously analog approach makes him uniquely suited to navigate a world increasingly dominated by digital technology. "With Chain Reaction, obviously, the technology is pretty central, but not really from a technical point of view," said Andrew. "We don't really delve into how any of that stuff works, or where its boundaries are, what it can do, what it should do, what it shouldn't do. We haven't gone down that road, really. We've used it more as a mirror that reflects the way that humans behave to one another. Are people being greedy? Are they cheating? Things like that."
Andrew explained that ignoring AI would be like pretending cars or airplanes don't exist—it's too big a part of the modern world to overlook. "We had to acknowledge it," he said. "We couldn't have Reacher just pretending it doesn't exist. It would be like pretending cars don't exist, or airplanes or something. We had to at least have it acknowledged as a thing that is there in his world, and it introduced a lot of good opportunities for him to deal with bad people in the way that we love Reacher dealing with them."
But while Reacher might be technologically reluctant, Andrew was quick to point out that there's a huge difference between choosing not to use something and being unable to understand it. "The thing is, he doesn't understand why anybody would [use AI]," he told Collider. "You look at Facebook and see somebody posting a picture of the sandwich they had for lunch, and all these replies. That is what Reacher would be bamboozled by. How on earth is this interesting? How on earth is this worth your time when there are so many better things to do?"
Andrew went on to explain that Reacher knows how to use technology—he just doesn't want to be tethered to it. "It's not how to use it that's a mystery to him. It's why on earth people want to. Why do they want to be tethered? He spends his whole time being free and being unencumbered by stuff. So why would you want an invisible leash connected to you?"
For Lee, Chain Reaction also highlights something that often gets overshadowed by Reacher's bone-crunching action: he's an extraordinarily gifted detective. When asked whether Reacher's intellectual abilities are more important to his longevity than his physical prowess, Lee compared his creation to another famous investigator. "I definitely think so," he said. "I think mental processes are actually more, or possibly just as much, his physical power. That goes all the way back, really, to Sherlock Holmes, because everybody has seen Sherlock Holmes on TV or in the movies. Relatively fewer people have read him, and if you return to the original Conan Doyle texts, Sherlock Holmes is obviously a tremendous thinker, but also very, very physical. Sherlock Holmes in the books is a fighter. He's a street fighter. He knows what to do. And so Reacher is a kind of updated version of that. Both sides of the coin."
This isn't the first time Reacher has had to adapt to modern times. In a recent interview, Lee Child revealed how the character finally caught up with modern tech, and the upcoming Chain Reaction is set to drop on October 20. Fans of the Prime Video series will also be excited to know that a spin-off centered on Susan Turner is in the works, and Reacher's streaming dominance continues to grow, with Neagley overtaking Reacher in streaming rankings recently. The show's success has even sparked comparisons to other action thrillers like Grisham's Rainmaker.
With Chain Reaction, the Child brothers have crafted a story that proves brains beat bytes, and that Reacher's analog instincts are more relevant than ever in a world that's increasingly digital. As Lee put it, Reacher is a modern-day Sherlock Holmes—a thinker and a fighter, ready to take on whatever the 21st century throws at him.
