Jack Reacher Author Lee Child Struggled To Write Season 4's Book For One Reason

It's no surprise that "Reacher" season 3 broke a Prime Video viewing record. The Alan Ritchson-led series proved hugely popular when it debuted in 2022, and while season 2 was somewhat of a rocky patch for the show, the third "Reacher" outing was based on the very best book in Lee Child's original series, "Persuader." That means we got Ritchson's ex-military man skulking around a mansion trying to solve the disappearance of an informant and uncover the secret behind Zachary Beck's (Anthony Michael Hall) shady rug business. The whole thing was made even better by the fact Jack Reacher faced off against his most formidable foe yet in the form of Olivier Richters' gigantic bodyguard Paulie.

All of that added up to arguably the best season of the series yet, which poses a problem for the show's writers going forward. Once you've adapted the best Jack Reacher novel, where do you go next? "Reacher" already received an early renewal for season 4, so we're definitely seeing Ritchson's vigilante again. But outdoing the absolute action majesty of season 3 is going to be tough.

Thankfully, "Reacher" season 4 is based on the book with the most outlandish reveal in the whole property, which should go a way towards making it memorable. Even with that in mind, the writers will have a tough time topping their last effort, which will be fitting seeing as Child himself struggled with the source material.

"Reacher" season 4 is based on "Gone Tomorrow," the 13th book in Lee Child's expansive series, which now includes 29 novels. The story sees Reacher traveling on a subway car in New York City (the same setting as season 2, which was based on the book "Bad Luck and Trouble") where he finds himself with five other strangers. But this being a Jack Reacher story, trouble very quickly emerges. Even when Reacher is seemingly protected from the "bad luck and trouble" that so frequently finds him, he manages to get into some sort of debacle, and this time he's got a suicide bomber on his hands, which leads him smack bang into the middle of a terrorist conspiracy that has him racing across Manhattan.

During a discussion between Child and Stephen King (via GBH Forum Network), the author revealed that he was actually living in New York at the time he wrote "Gone Tomorrow," which you might think helped him with the authenticity of his Manhattan-based thriller. To the contrary, his direct experience of NYC actually made it quite difficult to write the book. "That was my sort of homage to New York," he explained, "I was living there at that time and I was writing the book completely accurately. But the accuracy turned out to be a pain." Child went on to describe a passage that involved Reacher and his cohorts driving from the Dakota building down to the West Village. "I had him doing it as you would," he explained, "but then I reread the page and it was like reading a Map Quest page on acid. Oneway Street, no left turn and all of this." Thankfully, Child seemed to catch himself early on and figured out a way to simplify the writing enough that it read more fluidly. He continued:

"That to me became an absolute example of how, actually, you've got to get things wrong to get them right because I just simplified the geography. I figured people knew the West Side, they knew the East Side. They knew the Villages at the bottom, they know Harlem's at the top, Central Park's in the middle, so I just basically [wrote], 'They come down the Westside Highway and turn left onto Houston Street,' which you absolutely can't do, but I figured for the rest of the world..."

King then responded with, "You make it up, don't you? You just do."

After season 1 of "Reacher" adapted the first novel, "Killing Floor," season 2 jumped ahead in the books to "Bad Luck and Trouble." In the book, the story plays out in Los Angeles, but the show's writers decided to shift the setting to New York City. So, with season 2 of "Reacher," we got to see Alan Ritchson's hulking hero smashing his way through the Big Apple and some other East Coast locations. But the season was actually shot mostly in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, so we haven't really seen Reacher in New York proper just yet.

Now, it seems season 4 will once again rob us of a true New York-based "Reacher" outing, with the first behind-the-scenes images revealing the series' crew shooting in Philadelphia. Not only that, but the set decorations also suggest the show's writers are actually shifting the location from NYC to Philly rather than using the latter as a stand-in for the former, marking the second major location change from the books for the TV series.

Just how that might impact the story remains unclear at this point, but hopefully, this will be the first season of the series that really immerses us in a place. "Reacher" season 1 was forced to build an entire town in the middle of a cornfield due to the COVID-19 pandemic, giving the season a somewhat artificial feeling. Season 2 was based in New York but shot in Toronto, so it didn't feel quite right, while season 3 was mostly based in a mansion, which was a heck of a lot of fun but didn't necessarily give us that immersive feeling of being in a particular city or town. Hopefully, with season 4 shooting on-location in Philly, we'll get a little more in the way of detail and immersion of the type Child had to tone down in his writing.

"Reacher" season 4 has yet to set an official release date, but will stream on Prime Video.