SO LONG, JACK REACHER

At the age of 66, Lee Child is putting down his pen and allowing his younger brother to take over his bestselling series. He tells us why

- NICK RUFFORD

THE end of a dirt track in the American wilderness – it may be the natural habitat of a reclusive guy like Jack Reacher but it’s not where you’d expect to find a high-profile writing sensation like Lee Child who is the brain behind one of the world’s most valuable publishing franchises.

Yet for the past seven months the bestselling British author has been pumping his own water from a borehole and driving three hours to collect groceries from the nearest store. Moose and elk wander up to the door of his timber house, and raptors hang above the distant Snowy Mountains.

“It’s just breathtakingly beautiful,” he says. “The mail is left 10 miles (16km) away in a locked box on the shoulder of a road, so it is unbelievably remote. If I go back to New York, I can walk one block to the store at midnight and see more people than I’ve seen here in two months.”

Lee, who turned 66 last month, retreated to Wyoming in February with his American wife, Jane, to the same tract of wilderness where the youngest of his three brothers, Andrew Grant – also an established thriller writer, albeit with a smaller audience and 14 years his junior – lives.

At first the move was temporary, to recharge his writing batteries and bring some respite from the rush and crush of life in New York, where he moved to from Britain in 1998. Then he got snowed in. Then lockdown happened. Then he fell in love with the place.