The author of the Jack Reacher novels has reached the end of the line.
Lee Child, whose popular books featuring the private investigator, is handing off the character to his younger brother, Andrew Grant, The Guardian reports.
Child had considered killing the character off, but thought better of it.
“For years I thought about different ways of killing Reacher off. First of all, I thought he would go out in a blaze of bullets, something like the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Child said.
But now Reacher is “in safe hands,” Child said.
“It’s not as if I twisted his arm into doing it,” he said. “And he didn’t twist mine either. It just happened. It feels like a natural development. My brother is a good writer. Now he has a hero. Readers don’t need to know about me or whoever writes the books. They only really care about Reacher.”
Grant, who will write the books under the name Andrew Child, told the BBC that he knows “what it's like to wait for the new Reacher novel.”
“I understand what Reacher fans want—because I am one,” he said. “And I'll do my best to deliver for them. I'll have to. Because my big brother will be watching."
The most recent novel in the Jack Reacher series, Blue Moon, was published last fall, and Andrew Grant’s first Reacher novel, The Sentinel, is slated for publication this October.
Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
