Thus far, five of Lee Child’s 29 total Jack Reacher books have been adapted as on-screen narratives. The two Tom Cruise movies were based on One Shot (the ninth book) and Never Go Back (the 18th book). When things switched over to the small screen for Prime Video with the Alan Ritchson-led TV series they naturally started with the first book, Killing Floor, many Jack Reacher fans’ favorite of the Child novels to this day. Since then, the Prime Video series has adapted the 11th book, Bad Luck and Trouble, one of the saga’s more intimate stories; and, most recently, Persuader, the seventh book and one of the saga’s more adaptable.
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The source material for Reacher Season 4 has officially been confirmed to be Gone Tomorrow, the 13th book of the saga. As for what comes next, there are options, some of which are better than others. It would be best to avoid either of the two stories already adapted for the Cruise movies, so which of the remaining books are the best books for a season of television?
1) Die Trying (Book 2)
Die Trying has Reacher kidnapped alongside Holly Johnson, an FBI Special Agent assigned to the Chicago Field Office who also just so happens to be both the daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the goddaughter of none other than the President of the United States of America. It’s for that latter reason they were kidnapped, with Reacher simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, helping a woman he doesn’t recognize (Johnson) who is struggling with her crutches.
The Montana-based militia who has taken the pair is a radical organization that wishes to secede from the U.S. They intend to use Johnson as leverage. While trapped at the militia’s compound, they’re kept alive, but only barely, and it becomes increasingly evident that their temporary home is soon going to become a warzone. Suffice to say, it would be an action-packed series of Reacher, with plenty of big moments to ensure there wouldn’t be a dull episode. Ritchson himself has said Die Trying is his favorite book of the saga, so expect this one at some point or another.
2) Tripwire (Book 3)
Some of the best Reacher stories bring in elements of his past. For instance, the primary antagonist of Persuader and Reacher Season 3, Xavier Quinn. This is the case with Tripwire, too, which digs into the career of one of Reacher’s main allies, General Leon Garber (who is also a part of the aforementioned second book).
General Garber dies in-between the events of Die Trying and Tripwire, and now his daughter, attorney Jodie Garber, has hired a private investigator to find Reacher. But, while the private investigator never finds Reacher, Reacher does find the private investigator’s body. She wants help learning about her father’s final project, but this has attracted the attention of a war criminal with an axe to grind.
3) Running Blind (Book 4)
Running Blind (AKA The Visitor) would be a season of Reacher where the stakes are higher than usual for the title character. Two of his former Army cohorts are found murdered in their bathtubs, with no signs of a blade or a gunshot wound. Their tubs have been filled with Army-issue camouflage paint. In other words, it looks as though they were killed without a weapon by a big man who knew them both, a descriptor that fits Reacher.
The mistaken identity thread wouldn’t last throughout the season. After all, another woman is killed while Reacher is in custody. But once he’s roped into the investigation, it proves to be one of the more surprising and intriguing mysteries in the saga’s history. Plenty of shows have done the whole serial killer thing, but if done with that Reacher touch it could prove to be one of the show’s best seasons yet. After all, Running Blind is one of the best books in the series.
4) Without Fail (Book 6)
While Frances Neagley has only been a sporadic presence in the Jack Reacher books, she’s been consistently by his side on Reacher. She’s even getting her own spin-off series. And were Without Fail to be adapted, her presence in the season would be a natural one, because she’s a major part of the book.
Reacher is enlisted by Secret Service agent Mary Ellen Froelich to help her prevent the assassination of the Vice President. It’s no training exercise, though, as the VP and his protective team have been receiving increasingly detailed, and increasingly threatening letters. It’s prevention time, and before long Reacher and Neagley are going to have to ascertain the identity of the penman.
5) The Hard Way (Book 10)
A season of Reacher is, to an extent, only as good as its main antagonist is bad. And, in The Hard Way‘s Edward Lane, the show would have one of its best and baddest antagonists to date. The narrative has Reacher forced to meet with Lane after he sees someone drive away with one of Lane’s Mercedes while Reacher is in a coffee shop. Reacher is told that Lane’s wife, Kate, has been kidnapped, and whoever stole the car is part of the group that took her.
But this isn’t the first wife of Lane’s to be kidnapped, which is something the sister of his first wife, Anne, who was found dead, tells Reacher. But the sister thinks Lane was the guilty party in that kidnapping, as he’s consumed by a bad temper and reacts violently when something (or someone) doesn’t go his way. She fears he’s now set to repeat history. But it turns out this kidnapping is for real, sort of.
6) Nothing to Lose (Book 12)
Nothing to Lose is one of several books in the franchise that has Reacher essentially infiltrate an entire town under the thumb of a morally bankrupt individual (or individuals). It’s the type of over-arching plot that really works for this lone wolf on a mission type of protagonist.
The book has everything that would make it a great season of Reacher. An Army soldier being hunted by a secret military unit, a corrupt judge, a missing husband, a recycling plant that’s a front for a military experimentation operation…it would be great.
7) 61 Hours (Book 14)
It wouldn’t be fun to shoot, but 61 Hours would make for a fantastic season of Reacher. The whole thing takes place in a snowy South Dakota town, with the action kicking off when the bus Reacher has hitched a ride on crashes after narrowly avoiding a collision with a swerving car.
At first, the town’s authority figures think that Reacher is someone sent to take out a star witness in an upcoming trial. But he isn’t, and it may very well be that the assassin is already within the bounds of the icy town’s perimeter.
8) Worth Dying For (Book 15)
The Jack Reacher series works fine when it’s telling an intimate tale, but it’s even better when it has the title character going up against a cabal. That’s more or less what Worth Dying For is, but instead of some big government agency with tons of men to spare, it’s a redneck family called the Duncans who have made their riches trafficking young women and holding their Nebraska hometown hostage.
Worth Dying For is fun because the central mystery of a twenty-five-year-old unsolved missing persons case unravels at a nice pace. Furthermore, the Duncan clan is on the more contemptable side of Jack Reacher antagonists, and it’s fun to have him take them down one by one.
9) The Affair (Book 16)
The Affair takes place six months prior to the events of Killing Floor, AKA the inspiration for the first season of Reacher. If they go the route of adapting it, perhaps Ritchson could be digitally de-aged a bit (his physical transformation between Season 1 and Season 2 is almost at the level of Sylvester Stallone between the first two Rambo movies).
But all in all, it’s source material that would work for a full season of television. It has Reacher still in the Army investigating a mystery that ends up being directly related to an Army base. There’s some compelling internal conflict that could be tackled there. It doesn’t have as much action as one might expect from a story about Jack Reacher going up against an Army base, but it would be interesting stuff nonetheless.
10) The Midnight Line (Book 22)
The later Jack Reacher books simply aren’t on par with the earlier ones, especially once they started being written by both Lee and Andrew Child (beginning with book 25, The Sentinel). Starting with the 19th entry, Personal, it started to seem like the novels were too often either taking big, ineffective leaps or comfortably treading familiar ground to a decreasing degree of success. The outlier is The Midnight Line, which starts in a simple and charming way, with Reacher trying to return a West Point Graduation ring.
As is typical for the IP, there’s a criminal enterprise that must be taken down, but the book works so well because, for the most part, it’s focusing on the effects opioids have on people more than it is having Reacher beat the tar out of dope peddlers. In fact, there isn’t much action in The Midnight Line. But it would still work as a poignant season of television.
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