September 18, 2024 • 11 mins
He may have stepped back from his iconic series, but that doesn’t mean Lee Child has put his pen down.
Since his announcement last year that he was passing the character of Jack Reacher over into his brother’s hands, he’s been credited in the latest novel ‘In Too Deep’, which is being released in October.
But before that Child has released another project of his own, an action-packed short story collection called ‘Safe Enough: And Other Stories’.
He told Mike Hosking that they’re stories he’s written over the course of his career, and since stepping back from Reacher, someone suggested he make a collection.
“They were kind of secret projects of mine that I would do anything I wanted,” Child said.
“And I'm very interested to see what other people think of them.”
The oldest story was written twenty years ago, back in 2004, with the others all falling somewhere in between then and the present.
“I have no idea what people will think. I hope they like them, but we shall find out.”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
For a bloke who says he's stepping back, Lee Child
just can't seem to put a pin down. It was
last year he told us he was leaving Jack Riacher
to his brother. But those retirement roomors started way back
in twenty twenty and since then he's co written reach
of books. He's also credited with a new Reacher book,
which is called Into Deep, and that's out next month.
Then we come to his latest venture, which is called
safe Enough in other stories, it's a collection of short stories.
So whatn't earth is going on? Lee Child is back
(00:22):
with us.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Good morning, Good morning, Mike.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Always a pleasure, and I'm sort of I must confess
I am slightly confused because I'm pretty sure this is
how our interviews have gone over the years. So you
write a book about Jack Reacher, and I talk to
you about it, and then you tell me that you're
over writing about Jack Reacher. So then we bring your
brother in, and then he's writing about Jack Reacher, and
you say you're out, you're done, it's over. And yet
(00:46):
here I am in this late August morning, Lee, talking
to you about your latest book. I thought you'd quit.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, well we're both right in a way. I mean,
these are short stories and they have been written over
my career. You know, I'm betting that you you're a
radio star, right. I bet you get jobs doing them,
seeing at charity events or after dinner speaking or something
like that, and I bet you do it really well,
but you don't think of that as your main job. Right.
(01:12):
So my main job was writing Reacher, which I do
not do anymore. But somebody said, look, you've got all
these short stories, twenty of them. Why don't you put
them in a book. And I thought, ah, I don't know.
I mean it's a bit secret. You know, writing a
short story is outside of what I normally did. And
(01:35):
I never took them that. I didn't think they were
that important because you know, they don't sell very well
short stories. Nobody really reads them. So they were kind
of secret projects of mine that I would do anything
that I wanted. And I said, I'm a bit nervous
about it. And the guy said, nah, are they're great?
You know, this is the thing. Show them what you
(01:55):
doing outsider Reacher. So I said, all right, and here
we are twenty short stories in a book, and I'm
very interested to see what people think of them. I
like most of them.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
What period of time were they written over.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I've just looked. The oldest one is exactly twenty years ago,
two thousand and four, and the others interspersed between then
and now. It's the sort of thing you get asked
to do, you know, for a charity volume, or to
support a writer's organization or something like that. And my
problem is I have this show business brain that means
that if you get a lot of money for it,
(02:33):
lots of people are looking at it, and therefore it's important.
But because you don't get any money for short stories,
I'm thinking nobody is seeing these, so I can be
totally free. So this is me being me, and I
have no idea what people will think. I hope they
like them, but we shall find out.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Well, you're a genius, so they will. Could I pick
when they were written in terms of your writing progression,
style and skill, given we're talking about a twenty year
time span.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I honestly would hope that you could, But actually I
don't think you would, because I don't think I ever
got any better from when I started. You know, somebody
made me reread my first book. It was another charity
thing whereby the auction off a first edition of a
book that is annotated in the margins in pencil by
(03:24):
the author, why did you do that? Why did you
do this? And so I reread Killing Floor for the
first time ever, and I thought I was expecting it
to be like awful, you know, first novel, clunky, But
it was actually pretty good, and I thought, damn, that's great.
I felt good for a day, and then I felt
bad because I thought, wait a minute, have I not
(03:46):
got any better since I started?
Speaker 1 (03:49):
You might have been brilliant right from the start. That's
the point, isn't it. The thing about short stories that's
always fascinated me. Do you write to a prescription? In
other words, obviously the beginning, middle, and the en been
you've got to there quickly, But does it have to
have a prescription?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It's sort of is dictated by the volume. They usually
have a theme or a title, you know, like a
love story aspect, or assassins or secrets or historical anniversaries
or something. It's dictated to an extent, but you just
run with it. And what I've loved about doing them
is that it's quick. You can do them in one day,
(04:25):
in a passion, in a blaze of creation. You're not
sitting there for months. You don't have that thing in
the back of your mind. Oh, I better save that
for chapter twenty. You just do what you want to do.
And looking back on them, I can remember where I
was and what I was doing while I was writing them,
and they're like a diary to me, and I'm fascinated
(04:48):
by them. I hope people will be too.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
But every word, the shorter it is. Every word has
to be a gym, though, doesn't it. In a long
piece of work, you can you know, you can roll
for a while. These are god be nuggets.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, they've got to be tight, they've got to be fast,
and you're right every single word because usually there's a limit.
You know. They don't mind if you come in too long,
but if you come in too long, you're you're not
doing it right. It's got to be tight. And so yeah,
I love that. Every sentence has got to be tight.
And maybe the next sentence that you would have done
(05:22):
in a novel, you just skip it and move on.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, fantastic. Now I'm going to be interviewing you for
the next fifteen to twenty years. As you pull out,
You've got like nine hundred of these tucked away somewhere.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I think there are a few more. Yeah, and of
course there are plenty of Reacher short stories that we
already put in a book, but these are the non reaches,
and yeah, we could we could find some more. I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Okay, Well, now, quick report on your brother. Was he
doing Okay?
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, I think he's doing. Okay, he's doing. I like
the books, I think, and you know they're pleasing the fans.
And yeah, no, he's my little brother. What am I
going to say? Yes, he's a good it's great, but
on the other hand, not as good as me.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
No, exactly. Tell you what the television program seems. Are
you still actively involved in that? That seems to be
like a real hit.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
It is a huge hit. Yeah, and I thought it
would be because they put in so much effort and
skill on that first season. I thought, yeah, this is
going to work. But it worked way beyond anybody's expectations,
even Amazon's expectations. They weren't crazy about it. And I
am involved. We talk all the time. We discuss everything,
(06:32):
even down to really banal things. I'll get an email
with a picture of a shoe and somebody will say,
would Reacher wear a shoe like this?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And so, yeah, every single detail fantastic. Hey, listen, I
read something from you the other day suggesting you were
going to move back to Britain. Is that true? There
seems to be an angst building about America, American society
and all that's going on in you're off Is that true?
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It is true. It's scary. I mean, it is beyond
anything that you can imagine from the outside. I mean,
I know, you get all the news and you read
it all and everything, and you have an opinion, but
it is vicious and toxic and poisonous here. And I'm
too old to kind of grip my teeth and get
through four bad years in the hope of having some
(07:18):
future thing. So yeah, you know, I'm thinking if Trump
gets elected or selected or whatever, then I'm probably out
of here. Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
What do you make of what's happened in the last
couple I mean of the Kamala Harris thing, the Biden thing,
the convention that we've seen both conventions in the last
couple of weeks. What have you learned from that?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well? I was never a huge Biden fan, because I
thought he was as a senator which was the bulk
of his career. He was pretty ordinary. But actually he
did a great job as president, a great job getting
out of COVID, killing inflation, early boom in the economy.
He's done really well. But he is too old, There's
(08:02):
no question about it. I mean, it's just inhuman to
make a guy that age campaign. And so Kamala took over,
and I again was dubious about her, But she has
had a miraculous six weeks and that's got to be
some kind of political skill or talent. So yeah, I'm
hopeful about her.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Okay. Interesting. The other thing I read about you, by
the way, is your big scrap with your wind farm
in Wyoming. And the only reason I ask about that
is we're having this big debate in the country at
the moment about I mean, everyone is renewables and how
we do it and where we do it and all
that sort of stuff. So is wind farming explain the
story your problem. You're not anti renewable though, are you?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Totally not? I mean I'm all in favor of renewable
and Wyoming they call it the Saudi Arabia of wind
because it is constantly windy, Plus it is an empty state.
Nobody lives there. There are literally thousands of square miles
that are empty. And yeah, thisarticular wind farm, they're doing
it cheap and lazy because they're doing it near where
(09:04):
there's already a transmission line, and they're trying to thread
it between a railroad track and a major highway and
people's houses simply to save the money of making a
transmission line for themselves somewhere else. And I've said to them, look,
I love renewables. I think we should have the biggest
wind farm on Earth. We should have it visible from
(09:26):
out of space. It should be the eighth wonder of
the world. But put it somewhere that can accommodate it.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And are they Are you winning?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I think we're going to win simply out of bureaucratic inertia.
You know, they are so slow at doing anything. Plus
the weather is so bad there they only have a
kind of three month period of the year where they
can construct anything. So I think, yeah, they're going to
bite the bullet and the motto should be go big
or go home, and they're going to find somewhere to
(09:56):
make a really big wind farm that nobody sees. It
doesn't get in anybody's way, but it generates billions of
dollars for the state. They need imagination.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Do you still like it out in that last time
we talked to country You always get me confused somewhere
in winter and then you go somewhere slightly less winter
refers it was like Colorado, Wyom You're all able to
pay anyway. Do you still like that part of America
that you know, that really dissolate part of America?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I do, But it really is the contrast between densely
populated areas and not densely populated areas. That is the
fundamental divide in America, where cities and the rural communities
are totally different. And so I've got a foot in
each camp, and there are charming people everywhere. And the
(10:41):
tragedy is that the kind of person that you know
AOC in New York the Congress women super hip, called
woke and all that sort of stuff. And I've met
risk sensible women in Wyoming who can solve problems. If
you swap the those two around, they would be each
(11:02):
other within six months. Because that's what you do. You
adapt to your context, you adapt to your location, and
you try and help people out the instinct is exactly
the same. The animosity is stupid fantastic.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Where would you go back to in Britain if you moved.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I fancy somewhere around Oxford, because you know it's intellectual
and I'd never got in the university, so at least
I can go and live there now and pretend that
I'm in Brideshead revisited.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Well, wherever we find you next timely, it's always a
pleasure to catch up. Go will with this book end.
Are good to talk to you as always.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, I lovely to talk it my speech here soon.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
There he is out of New York this morning, safe
enough and other stories Lee Child.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks it'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
For a bloke who says he's stepping back, Lee Child
just can't seem to put a pin down. It was
last year he told us he was leaving Jack Riacher
to his brother. But those retirement roomors started way back
in twenty twenty and since then he's co written reach
of books. He's also credited with a new Reacher book,
which is called Into Deep, and that's out next month.
Then we come to his latest venture, which is called
safe Enough in other stories, it's a collection of short stories.
So whatn't earth is going on? Lee Child is back
(00:22):
with us.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Good morning, Good morning, Mike.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Always a pleasure, and I'm sort of I must confess
I am slightly confused because I'm pretty sure this is
how our interviews have gone over the years. So you
write a book about Jack Reacher, and I talk to
you about it, and then you tell me that you're
over writing about Jack Reacher. So then we bring your
brother in, and then he's writing about Jack Reacher, and
you say you're out, you're done, it's over. And yet
(00:46):
here I am in this late August morning, Lee, talking
to you about your latest book. I thought you'd quit.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, well we're both right in a way. I mean,
these are short stories and they have been written over
my career. You know, I'm betting that you you're a
radio star, right. I bet you get jobs doing them,
seeing at charity events or after dinner speaking or something
like that, and I bet you do it really well,
but you don't think of that as your main job. Right.
(01:12):
So my main job was writing Reacher, which I do
not do anymore. But somebody said, look, you've got all
these short stories, twenty of them. Why don't you put
them in a book. And I thought, ah, I don't know.
I mean it's a bit secret. You know, writing a
short story is outside of what I normally did. And
(01:35):
I never took them that. I didn't think they were
that important because you know, they don't sell very well
short stories. Nobody really reads them. So they were kind
of secret projects of mine that I would do anything
that I wanted. And I said, I'm a bit nervous
about it. And the guy said, nah, are they're great?
You know, this is the thing. Show them what you
(01:55):
doing outsider Reacher. So I said, all right, and here
we are twenty short stories in a book, and I'm
very interested to see what people think of them. I
like most of them.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
What period of time were they written over.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I've just looked. The oldest one is exactly twenty years ago,
two thousand and four, and the others interspersed between then
and now. It's the sort of thing you get asked
to do, you know, for a charity volume, or to
support a writer's organization or something like that. And my
problem is I have this show business brain that means
that if you get a lot of money for it,
(02:33):
lots of people are looking at it, and therefore it's important.
But because you don't get any money for short stories,
I'm thinking nobody is seeing these, so I can be
totally free. So this is me being me, and I
have no idea what people will think. I hope they
like them, but we shall find out.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Well, you're a genius, so they will. Could I pick
when they were written in terms of your writing progression,
style and skill, given we're talking about a twenty year
time span.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I honestly would hope that you could, But actually I
don't think you would, because I don't think I ever
got any better from when I started. You know, somebody
made me reread my first book. It was another charity
thing whereby the auction off a first edition of a
book that is annotated in the margins in pencil by
(03:24):
the author, why did you do that? Why did you
do this? And so I reread Killing Floor for the
first time ever, and I thought I was expecting it
to be like awful, you know, first novel, clunky, But
it was actually pretty good, and I thought, damn, that's great.
I felt good for a day, and then I felt
bad because I thought, wait a minute, have I not
(03:46):
got any better since I started?
Speaker 1 (03:49):
You might have been brilliant right from the start. That's
the point, isn't it. The thing about short stories that's
always fascinated me. Do you write to a prescription? In
other words, obviously the beginning, middle, and the en been
you've got to there quickly, But does it have to
have a prescription?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It's sort of is dictated by the volume. They usually
have a theme or a title, you know, like a
love story aspect, or assassins or secrets or historical anniversaries
or something. It's dictated to an extent, but you just
run with it. And what I've loved about doing them
is that it's quick. You can do them in one day,
(04:25):
in a passion, in a blaze of creation. You're not
sitting there for months. You don't have that thing in
the back of your mind. Oh, I better save that
for chapter twenty. You just do what you want to do.
And looking back on them, I can remember where I
was and what I was doing while I was writing them,
and they're like a diary to me, and I'm fascinated
(04:48):
by them. I hope people will be too.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
But every word, the shorter it is. Every word has
to be a gym, though, doesn't it. In a long
piece of work, you can you know, you can roll
for a while. These are god be nuggets.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, they've got to be tight, they've got to be fast,
and you're right every single word because usually there's a limit.
You know. They don't mind if you come in too long,
but if you come in too long, you're you're not
doing it right. It's got to be tight. And so yeah,
I love that. Every sentence has got to be tight.
And maybe the next sentence that you would have done
(05:22):
in a novel, you just skip it and move on.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, fantastic. Now I'm going to be interviewing you for
the next fifteen to twenty years. As you pull out,
You've got like nine hundred of these tucked away somewhere.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I think there are a few more. Yeah, and of
course there are plenty of Reacher short stories that we
already put in a book, but these are the non reaches,
and yeah, we could we could find some more. I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Okay, Well, now, quick report on your brother. Was he
doing Okay?
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, I think he's doing. Okay, he's doing. I like
the books, I think, and you know they're pleasing the fans.
And yeah, no, he's my little brother. What am I
going to say? Yes, he's a good it's great, but
on the other hand, not as good as me.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
No, exactly. Tell you what the television program seems. Are
you still actively involved in that? That seems to be
like a real hit.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
It is a huge hit. Yeah, and I thought it
would be because they put in so much effort and
skill on that first season. I thought, yeah, this is
going to work. But it worked way beyond anybody's expectations,
even Amazon's expectations. They weren't crazy about it. And I
am involved. We talk all the time. We discuss everything,
(06:32):
even down to really banal things. I'll get an email
with a picture of a shoe and somebody will say,
would Reacher wear a shoe like this?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And so, yeah, every single detail fantastic. Hey, listen, I
read something from you the other day suggesting you were
going to move back to Britain. Is that true? There
seems to be an angst building about America, American society
and all that's going on in you're off Is that true?
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It is true. It's scary. I mean, it is beyond
anything that you can imagine from the outside. I mean,
I know, you get all the news and you read
it all and everything, and you have an opinion, but
it is vicious and toxic and poisonous here. And I'm
too old to kind of grip my teeth and get
through four bad years in the hope of having some
(07:18):
future thing. So yeah, you know, I'm thinking if Trump
gets elected or selected or whatever, then I'm probably out
of here. Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
What do you make of what's happened in the last
couple I mean of the Kamala Harris thing, the Biden thing,
the convention that we've seen both conventions in the last
couple of weeks. What have you learned from that?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well? I was never a huge Biden fan, because I
thought he was as a senator which was the bulk
of his career. He was pretty ordinary. But actually he
did a great job as president, a great job getting
out of COVID, killing inflation, early boom in the economy.
He's done really well. But he is too old, There's
(08:02):
no question about it. I mean, it's just inhuman to
make a guy that age campaign. And so Kamala took over,
and I again was dubious about her, But she has
had a miraculous six weeks and that's got to be
some kind of political skill or talent. So yeah, I'm
hopeful about her.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Okay. Interesting. The other thing I read about you, by
the way, is your big scrap with your wind farm
in Wyoming. And the only reason I ask about that
is we're having this big debate in the country at
the moment about I mean, everyone is renewables and how
we do it and where we do it and all
that sort of stuff. So is wind farming explain the
story your problem. You're not anti renewable though, are you?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Totally not? I mean I'm all in favor of renewable
and Wyoming they call it the Saudi Arabia of wind
because it is constantly windy, Plus it is an empty state.
Nobody lives there. There are literally thousands of square miles
that are empty. And yeah, thisarticular wind farm, they're doing
it cheap and lazy because they're doing it near where
(09:04):
there's already a transmission line, and they're trying to thread
it between a railroad track and a major highway and
people's houses simply to save the money of making a
transmission line for themselves somewhere else. And I've said to them, look,
I love renewables. I think we should have the biggest
wind farm on Earth. We should have it visible from
(09:26):
out of space. It should be the eighth wonder of
the world. But put it somewhere that can accommodate it.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And are they Are you winning?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I think we're going to win simply out of bureaucratic inertia.
You know, they are so slow at doing anything. Plus
the weather is so bad there they only have a
kind of three month period of the year where they
can construct anything. So I think, yeah, they're going to
bite the bullet and the motto should be go big
or go home, and they're going to find somewhere to
(09:56):
make a really big wind farm that nobody sees. It
doesn't get in anybody's way, but it generates billions of
dollars for the state. They need imagination.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Do you still like it out in that last time
we talked to country You always get me confused somewhere
in winter and then you go somewhere slightly less winter
refers it was like Colorado, Wyom You're all able to
pay anyway. Do you still like that part of America
that you know, that really dissolate part of America?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I do, But it really is the contrast between densely
populated areas and not densely populated areas. That is the
fundamental divide in America, where cities and the rural communities
are totally different. And so I've got a foot in
each camp, and there are charming people everywhere. And the
(10:41):
tragedy is that the kind of person that you know
AOC in New York the Congress women super hip, called
woke and all that sort of stuff. And I've met
risk sensible women in Wyoming who can solve problems. If
you swap the those two around, they would be each
(11:02):
other within six months. Because that's what you do. You
adapt to your context, you adapt to your location, and
you try and help people out the instinct is exactly
the same. The animosity is stupid fantastic.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Where would you go back to in Britain if you moved.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I fancy somewhere around Oxford, because you know it's intellectual
and I'd never got in the university, so at least
I can go and live there now and pretend that
I'm in Brideshead revisited.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Well, wherever we find you next timely, it's always a
pleasure to catch up. Go will with this book end.
Are good to talk to you as always.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, I lovely to talk it my speech here soon.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
There he is out of New York this morning, safe
enough and other stories Lee Child.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks it'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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