Jack Reacher does not need apps, artificial intelligence, GPS, or even a permanent address to solve a problem when his brain and his fists will do. For that is what Lee Child’s wandering vigilante and former military cop has relied on, and for 30 years it’s been enough, but the world has changed considerably since Reacher first stepped off that bus in Margrave, and his latest adventure presents him with an opponent that couldn’t be further removed from the diner in Georgia.

In Chain Reaction, the latest installment in the bestselling thriller series, Andrew Child pits Reacher against artificial intelligence, data centers and tech bros. You know how this one’s gonna go. Speaking exclusively with Collider, both brothers told us why the character’s famously analogue outlook makes him particularly well suited to navigating a world increasingly dominated by digital technology. “With Chain Reaction, obviously, the technology is pretty central, but not really from a technical point of view,” said Andrew. “We don’t really delve into how any of that stuff works, or where its boundaries are, what it can do, what it should do, what it shouldn’t do. We haven’t gone down that road, really. We’ve used it more as a mirror that reflects the way that humans behave to one another. Are people being greedy? Are they cheating? Things like that.” Andrew explained that artificial intelligence was simply too significant a development to ignore, particularly when writing a character whose adventures are supposed to unfold in something resembling the modern world.
“AI is out there. It’s a huge deal. So we had to acknowledge it. We couldn’t have Reacher just pretending it doesn’t exist. It would be like pretending cars don’t exist, or airplanes or something. We had to at least have it acknowledged as a thing that is there in his world, and it introduced a lot of good opportunities for him to deal with bad people in the way that we love Reacher dealing with them.”
But while Reacher might be technologically reluctant, Andrew was keen to establish that there’s an enormous difference between choosing not to use something and being incapable of understanding it. “The thing is, he doesn’t understand why anybody would [use AI.] You look at Facebook and see somebody posting a picture of the sandwich they had for lunch, and all these replies. That is what Reacher would be bamboozled by,” he told Collider. “How on earth is this interesting? How on earth is this worth your time when there are so many better things to do?” Andrew went on to explain that it’s not like Reacher doesn’t know how to operate this stuff; he understands it fully, he just doesn’t want to be tethered to it. Technology is an anchor that keeps people from growing. He explained:
“It’s not how to use it that’s a mystery to him. It’s why on earth people want to. Why do they want to be tethered? He spends his whole time being free and being unencumbered by stuff. So why would you want an invisible leash connected to you?”

Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz
Which Action Hero Would Be
Your Perfect Partner?
Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt

Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.

Rambo
James Bond
Indiana Jones
John McClane
Ethan Hunt

FIND YOUR PARTNER →

01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner?
The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.

ASomeone who already has three contingency plans running and is calmly working through all of them.
BSomeone who reads the terrain instinctively and knows exactly how to use it against the enemy.
CSomeone who keeps their nerve and their sense of humour when everything is falling apart.
DSomeone who knows the history of wherever we are and what we’re walking into.
ESomeone with the right contact, the right cover identity, and the right exit already arranged.

NEXT QUESTION →

02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel?
How you get there is half the mission.

AOn foot through terrain no one else would attempt — I move where vehicles can’t follow.
BOn a motorcycle, a cargo plane, or anything else that gets me there before I think too hard about it.
CIn something that belongs to someone else — borrowed, stolen, or improvised under fire.
DFirst class, with a cover identity and a gadget that does something I won’t explain until it’s needed.
EBy whatever means are available — I’ve driven, flown, and once arrived by camel. The destination matters, not the method.

NEXT QUESTION →

03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do?
This is when you find out what someone is really made of.

ADisappears into the environment, flanks them silently, and ends it before I’ve reloaded.
BCracks a one-liner, grabs a fire extinguisher or a chair, and improvises something that somehow works.
CProduces a gadget specifically designed for this exact scenario and uses it with infuriating precision.
DPulls out a whip, a pistol, and an archaeological insight that somehow gets us out alive.
ENeutralises the threat with maximum efficiency and minimum words — they were already three moves ahead.

NEXT QUESTION →

04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest?
Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.

AA bar with terrible lighting, cold beer, and absolutely no questions about feelings.
BThe finest restaurant in the city, a bottle of something expensive, and a conversation that is equal parts brilliant and exhausting.
CA local dig site, a museum after hours, or a long story about why that particular artefact matters to human civilisation.
DPizza. Bad TV. Falling asleep halfway through a movie neither of you were watching anyway.
EA debrief that turns into three hours of contingency planning that somehow becomes the most fun you’ve had all week.

NEXT QUESTION →

05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission?
Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.

APrecise and minimal — tell me what I need to know and nothing else. Every word has a cost.
BDeadpan and dry — keeping it light keeps me sharp, even when everything is on fire.
CEnthusiastic and slightly chaotic — but always with useful information buried somewhere in the noise.
DCalm and controlled through an earpiece, with a plan that covers every variable I haven’t thought of yet.
EBarely at all — silence is a language and they speak it fluently.

NEXT QUESTION →

06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them?
The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.

AInfiltrate their inner circle, learn everything, and dismantle them from inside out before they know we’re there.
BStudy the historical pattern — every villain of this type has a weakness written somewhere in the past.
CGet them talking. The more they monologue, the more time I have to figure out how to beat them.
DGo through them. Directly. With as much force as the terrain allows.
EFind the one thing they haven’t accounted for — there’s always one thing — and make sure we’re holding it.

NEXT QUESTION →

07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do?
Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.

ACome in alone, quietly, and get me out before anyone knows they were there.
BHave already been working on the extraction since the moment I disappeared — the plan is already running.
CCome in loud, come in fast, and worry about the collateral damage later — I’d do the same for them.
DUse every resource, every contact, and bend every rule until I’m out — they don’t leave people behind.
ECharm their way in somehow, bluff through the hard part, and still manage to look good doing it.

NEXT QUESTION →

08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace?
A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.

ATechnology that shouldn’t exist yet and the training to use it under any conditions.
BSurvival instinct so refined it borders on supernatural — and the scars to prove it’s been tested.
CKnowledge of history, language, and culture that makes them invaluable in places where force is useless.
DThe ability to walk into any room in the world and immediately become the most trusted person in it.
EStubbornness that refuses to accept a situation is hopeless — and the improvisational skill to back it up.

NEXT QUESTION →

09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with?
No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.

AA partner who never fully switches off — always watching exits, always calculating threats, even at dinner.
BA partner who gets the job done brilliantly but has the emotional availability of a locked filing cabinet.
CA partner who makes everything ten times more complicated than it needs to be — but who always comes through.
DA partner who gets personally attached to every relic, ruin, and artefact we encounter, which slows everything down.
EA partner who was not built for this and knows it — but shows up anyway, every time, without being asked.

NEXT QUESTION →

10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now?
The last question is the most honest one.

AOne line. Absolutely dry. Delivered like the world isn’t ending. Then we move.
BNothing said at all — just a look that means we both already know what has to happen.
CA plan I don’t fully understand that somehow accounts for everything, delivered in thirty seconds flat.
DA piece of historical context that reframes the entire situation and tells us exactly what to do next.
ESomeone who steps forward instead of back — because that’s who they’ve always been.

REVEAL MY PARTNER →

Your Partner Has Been Assigned
Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.

James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.

Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.

John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.

Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

Lee Child Says Reacher’s Greatest Weapon Has Always Been His Brain

For Lee, Chain Reaction also demonstrates something that can occasionally get lost amid the broken bones and spectacular violence associated with Jack Reacher: The character is, first and foremost, an extraordinarily gifted detective. When Collider asked whether Reacher’s intellectual abilities were ultimately more important to his longevity than his physical dominance, Lee compared his creation to another of fiction’s most famous investigators, saying:
“I definitely think so. I think mental processes are actually more, or possibly just as much, his physical power. That goes all the way back, really, to Sherlock Holmes, because everybody has seen Sherlock Holmes on TV or in the movies. Relatively fewer people have read him, and if you return to the original Conan Doyle texts, Sherlock Holmes is obviously a tremendous thinker, but also very, very physical. Sherlock Holmes in the books is a fighter. He’s a street fighter. He knows what to do. And so Reacher is a kind of updated version of that. Both sides of the coin. There’s a Spanish journalist who invented a pun in a foreign language. This Spanish journalist calls Reacher ‘Sherlock Homeless,’ which sort of sums him up. The reader gets the fascination in the deduction, as well as the sense of vicarious empowerment in being physically unchallengeable.”
While the investigation involves cutting-edge technology, Lee was particularly fascinated by the enormous physical infrastructure required to support something as apparently intangible as artificial intelligence. “I love the way that this came out to be AI,” said Lee. “It fascinates me about AI because it’s all sort of virtual, it’s all software, but it has the most immense physical requirements. These massive data centers. Water, power, acreage — it’s an immensely physical thing, not just virtual.” Andrew agreed that Reacher’s instincts naturally lead him toward explanations that other investigators might overlook precisely because he’s accustomed to approaching problems without relying on modern technology. He told Collider:
“It seemed very suitable for Reacher. His default position is analogue, and so he’s not going to be thinking in terms of IP this and gigabyte that. His natural outlook, and all those years of experience as an investigator before this technology came along, means the idea of something being physically stolen is much more likely to occur to him than any of these technological things.”
Lee Child and Andrew Child were speaking exclusively to Collider in support of Chain Reaction, the latest Jack Reacher novel, which arrives October 20. Child will also co-write Zero Margin, the first Frances Neagley novel, with Yasmin Angoe, arriving in Spring 2027. Explore the Reacher novels and more with a free trial of Audible.

Release Date

February 3, 2022

Network

Prime Video

Showrunner

Nick Santora

Directors

Sam Hill, Gary Fleder, Omar Madha, Carol Banker, Julian Holmes, Lin Oeding, M.J. Bassett, Norberto Barba, Stephen Surjik, Thomas Vincent

Writers

Nick Santora, Cait Duffy, Michael J. Gutierrez, Lillian L Wang, Scott Sullivan, Nora Jobling