Even if you’ve never read one of Lee Child’s ‘Jack Reacher’ novels, you’ll have spotted the hugely successful page-turners in many bookshops.
Reacher’s a humourless, street-savvy, six-foot six-inch ex-Military Policeman who in the first book went rogue after doing something violent to bad people he thought deserved it.
In every subsequent book, he rights wrongs in a scientifically worked-out flurry of flying fists, kicks and broken teeth, before taking his only belongings – a credit card and folding toothbrush – and moving on to his next punch-up.
Every book is basically the same story, relocated to a different American town.
It’s a winning formula that I’ve adapted into my first novel about a mysterious loner who wanders around Wales fighting injustice.
Here’s an excerpt from my book “THE DAI WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD”.
“Dai Puncher eased his podgy five-foot, three-inch frame off the ‘bus and looked up at the sign that told him he’d arrived at a small village with the unwelcoming name of Y-haf-u-comyer.
The ex-Asda security man went rogue after breaking the jaw of a fat builder who’d parked his van in the Mother & Toddler area to avoid walking 10 yards to the supermarket entrance.
Puncher thought justice had been done.
Looking around the village square, Puncher’s sixth sense informed him menacing eyes were staring at him from the shadows. How he hated cats!
He never wore a watch but knew it was 4.15 p.m. According to the village clocktower.
Entering the Post Office, he immediately noticed two old ladies browsing through knitting patterns.
Suspecting they were undercover KGB agents, he coolly assessed which one to take on first.
The blue rinse or the one on the mobility scooter?
Taking no chances, he picked them both up and threw them through the window into the street.
As he asked the Post Mistress for six first-class stamps and a set of local postcards and told her to take the cost of a new window out of the credit card he’d handed her, he noticed her neatly-trimmed beard.
Old instincts kicked-in and he…!”
Sorry. You’ll have to buy the book if you want to know what happens next….