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'Reaching' Back to a Murky Past

Jack Reacher is a man who redefines the term "loner." A tough ex-military cop, Reacher wanders across America without any family, job or possessions, but trouble seems to find him wherever he goes.

British novelist Lee Child takes the maverick drifter back to 1990 in The Enemy, the eighth book of the best-selling "Jack Reacher" series. In writing the prequel, Child had to create a younger, more naïve version of his popular character. "It was a tremendous exercise technically to regress a character rather than progress him," Child says. "But it was a lot of fun to do."

In the second of a three-part series on mystery writers, Child talks to NPR's Linda Wertheimer about his latest thriller and who "the enemy" really is.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Wertheimer
As NPR's senior national correspondent, Linda Wertheimer travels the country and the globe for NPR News, bringing her unique insights and wealth of experience to bear on the day's top news stories.