Lee Child releases a short story, 'Deep Down'

A second short story about vigilante hero Jack Reacher is welcome news. Child's first Reacher short story dealt with his vigilante hero's childhood, while the latest, 'Deep Down', is from his army days. We know from experience that shorter forms of the Reacher novels have huge appeal for readers—in fact we've been publishing them in Select Editions since 1998!

 

It's intriguing that John Zinsser Jnr., editor of the Select Editons series from the 1960s to the 1980s, served in the US Navy in World War II. Brevity was important for Zinsser—maybe he got the habit of reading shorter fiction in between watches while at sea? When he retired in 1987, he told Publishers Weekly. 'I do wish that books weren't so long and getting longer. The days of a good story told in a reasonable number of pages—such as Cry, the Beloved Country in 283; To Kill a Mockingbird in 296—seem gone.'

 

Not for Lee Child and Select Editions, they're not!

 

Click here for an exclusive extract from Child's recent Jack Reacher novel, The Affair.