The art of repetition

This week, I finished listening to Make Me, number twenty in the Jack Reacher series, by Lee Child.

I love Reacher - I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm also very impressed that Mr Child has managed to produce twenty books about this character without me wanting to stop reading them. Some are better than others, but all of them have entertained me. I'm not sure I would have stuck it out this far if I'd been reading the text versions, but they are absolutely perfect as audiobooks, particularly when read by Jeff Harding, who inhabits the character of Reacher so completely in my head that I don't think I'd be able to listen to him reading anything else, and certainly wouldn't want to listen to a Reacher book read by another narrator.

I think the key to the success of the Reacher series, for me, is repetition. I was talking to my mum on the phone the other day and mentioned I was listening to a Reacher book. She asked which one, and I said:

"It's the one where he completely co-incidentally turns up in a small American town where something nerfarious is going on, and teams up with an attractive female law enforcement officer to deal with the bad guys. Oh, wait - that's not really going to help you, is it?"

The format is very much variation-on-a-theme, and always utterly ridiculous, but it's just so damn entertaining, that I can listen to as many variations on that theme as Mr Child can churn out, and not get bored.

On an individual level, Child also uses repetition to his advantage, in the way he threads the narrative with repeated words, phrases, dialogue and descriptions. I noticed it particularly in this book, and it somehow gives the narrative an almost poetic flow in places. It's very well done, not only emphasising important details, but also providing a rhythm to the book that makes it all the more immersive.

Reacher always makes me laugh, and I'm always rooting for him enthusiastically, even though I know he's never really in danger. What can I say? In some ways, I'm very shallow, and these books just hit all the right buttons for me, when I'm in the mood for pure, predictable entertainment.

Can't wait for the next one to come out in November!

Reacher - variations on a theme

I just watched the Tom Cruise Reacher movie for the second time, from a very different perspective than when it first came out. Back then, I didn't even know who Reacher was, so I came to the movie unbiased by prior expectations. Since then, I have listened to twenty Reacher books, so I'd like to think I know him pretty well.

Obviously, Tom Cruise doesn't fit the physical profile at all - for a start, he's ten inches too short, and he's not blond. But hey - physical appearance isn't everything - though Reacher's physicality does inform his actions and his attitude to quite an extent.

The other main drawback for me was that Tom Cruise's Reacher doesn't have the right intonation. Now, this is partially because I'm so used to Jeff Harding's voice as Reacher - but the dialogue wasn't right in a lot of ways. Reacher has certain phrases he uses a lot ("Outstanding" springs to mind), and the single most frequent repeated sentence in any Reacher book is, "Reacher said nothing." So, Cruise's character was at once too loquacious and not sarcastic or funny enough.

And then there was the driving. In the movie, there are two sequences that rely on Reacher being able to drive in a ridiculous fashion - but it's emphasised many times in the books that he failed Advanced Driving!

Reacher nearly always teams up with a female lawyer/cop/federal agent/private investigator - and the movie is no different. They're generally very well able to look after themselves, though, so it was a bit disappointing that Rosamund Pike ended up in classic damsel-in-distress mode. I don't remember if this happens to her in the book or not, but I do know there are more significant female characters in the book, who add a great deal more to how it plays out.

So, it's impossible for me to see my imagined version of Reacher in the Tom Cruise movie version - but it's still quite a good film and largely entertaining. My reason for re-watching it was to help me decide if I want to go and see the next one, due out in the next few weeks - and I think my decision is that I will. Not least because it's an adaptation of one of my favourite Reacher books, and I'm hoping the inclusion of Cobie Smulders in the female partner role will improve that side of things no end.