With Tom Cruise's "Jack Reacher" soon upon us, I thought I'd repost an interview I did with Reacher creator Lee Child two years ago. (Note: Child plays a police desk sargeant in the movie, which I just saw. Review to come.

  “This is what I would do if I could get away with it,” said best-selling novelist Lee Child. Child was talking about Jack Reacher  and considering how much of himself is imbedded in that character. “A lot, really,” Child said.   

   The writer launched Reacher, the iconoclastic loner and ex-Army MP, in 1997. Tall, tough and tenacious, Reacher has extraordinary weaponry and hand-to-hand combat skills. He has no job, no home and few possessions. But he finds himself thrust into numerous situations where he must confront all kinds of evil.

     “That’s the key to serious writing and serious reading, wish fulfillment for the writer and reader,” the British-born Child said on the phone from Manhattan, where he’s lived since 1998.

    Child just published “61 Hours,” the 14^th novel in his best-selling thriller series. Reacher was bounced out of the military for bending some rules, exacting his own sort of justice when he discovered the Army and the country had been betrayed by higher-ups.

    Before he took the name Lee Child, he was James Grant. He worked for Britain’s Grenada Television from 1977-1995 and had a hand in some of their best mini-series, “Brideshead Revisited” and “Prime Suspect.” Then, he was sacked.

    “I was a presentation director,” Child said, “like an air traffic controller for the network. And I was a union organizer for the last couple of years. I was blacklisted, essentially, and unemployable. I thought, ‘What’s the nearest thing I could do to that kind of mass-market entertainment?’ It didn’t seem that huge a leap to writing this kind of book. And I had no other avenue to explore really.”

    Good call, it turned out. Worldwide, Child has sold more than 40 million books.

    In “61 Hours,” Reacher deals with a nasty, little Mexican drug lord called Plato, who’s got his hooks in some folks in a small South Dakota town. That town happens to contain a huge, secret underground military bunker. It’s stuffed with valuables and tons of methamphetamine left over from World War II, when the government used to supply fighters with the drug.

    Reacher’s rootlessness makes for unique creative opportunities, Child said. “It’s completely unrestricted, very flexible. He can do anything and be anywhere. For me, it's really about a total luxury. I think, ‘All right, where s he going to be now?’ It can be a completely new region and pitch of adventure. It could be glossy with government and the FBI and all that or it could be a really small town. It’s a question of dumping him down in a situation and seeing what he does with it.”

   Recently Esquire writer David Granger read all the books, loved them, but termed Reacher a “misanthrope.’

    “I think misanthrope is a little strong,” Child said, “because it requires active dislike. I think Reacher largely is indifferent in theory. If he meets you he’ll like you or not like you, but the decision that comes is in the light of experience.”

    Reacher may wage a fight for justice, but he has no overarching goals.

    “It’s not so much he goes out seeking justice,” Child said. “He will just go about his business and if injustice presents itself then he is involuntarily offended. He just lives one day at a time.”

   Asked to assess his own temperament, Child said, “I’m not a depressed person. But I’m not starry-eyed about the world. The world is a pretty rotten place. I’m gloomy rather than depressed.”