Request: Recommend Me Another Reacher
Preferably books, but streaming TV would also be good
So, Reacher season three is coming out in a few weeks:
This one will be an interesting experience, because I have deliberately avoided reading either of the books that were the basis for seasons 1 and 2 (Killing Floor and Bad Luck and Trouble) so as not to be distracted by comparisons between the different treatments. That’s going to be impossible this time out, since as it turns out, my airplane reading on our flight down to Tampa at the end of December was Persuader, the book this season is based on. (The duration of a direct flight from Albany to Tampa turns out to be “Just long enough to get within 50 pages of the end of a Jack Reacher novel” which was frustrating…)
Anyway, I was talking to Kate about the book, and noted that there are two genre-subverting things I really enjoy about these. One is that Lee Child is really good at seeming to telegraph the ending and then going in a completely different direction at the last minute. The most dramatic example in Persuader is a Chekov violation: a gun that doesn’t get fired in the final act. It’s a genre that’s often highly formulaic, so it’s fun to be caught off guard by surprising villain reveals or seemingly obvious setpieces that don’t happen.
The other thing I enjoy is that while the Manly Man Beats Up Bad Guys genre is highly right-wing coded these days, the author is a British dude, and thus not really on that end of the US political spectrum. This manifests in every one of the books that I’ve read to this point having at least one scene in which somebody spouts a bunch of right-wing political boilerplate, and Reacher is like “Nah, man, I’m a liberal.” Again, using Persuader as an example, one of the characters says some things that are straight out of an NRA election mailer and Reacher replies with “That’s a bunch of crap, guns suck.”
It’s not great from a suspension-of-disbelief standpoint, but it is entertaining, at least to me.
Anyway, there are a whole bunch more of these, which I anticipate working my way through. I do expect the quality will tail off at some point, though (this almost inevitably happens with long series) and also that binge-reading too many of these would accelerate that process. So I’d like to have some alternatives lined up, because this genre really is perfect airplane reading, at least for me: diverting enough to distract from how much being on a plane sucks, but not requiring a huge amount of brainpower to follow along. It’s also great as something to watch while riding the stationary bike in the basement, for more or less the same reasons.
Which brings me around to the request of the post title: If you know of thriller-type series (either books or video) that offer 1) engaging plots that aren’t stupidly obvious, and 2) an absence of obnoxiously right-wing politics, point me that way in the comments. I could absolutely use more reading material (I’m doling these out slowly so I don’t run out, but would probably be happier if I read more novels and did less dicking around on social media), and while I don’t have an acute shortage of things to watch, we’re in a bad-weather season and I’m having elbow issues that restrict my hoops-playing, so I’ll be on the bike quite a bit in the next few months. So, fire away:
The other reliable series I’ve been alternating with Reacher novels while traveling are Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar series (which apparently has a Prime Video spinoff that I’ve never heard of?) and Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole series. Those are both more in the private-eye vein, though, which isn’t quite the same.
If you can throw me a recommendation in that general direction, it will be much appreciated. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to doomscroll on my phone more than I already do, which might lead to me writing about politics, and none of us want that.
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David McCloskey had three great contemporary Spy thrillers: Damascus Station, Moscow X, The Seventh Floor.
George Pelacanos' DC Quartet are pretty great older books that are loosely tied together.
I second the suggestion of Mick Herron's "Slow Horses" series. The Apple TV series is great too, Gary Oldham is fabulous.