The first season of Reacher was based on the first book of the series, Killing Floor, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I liked it so much that when I ran out of interesting stuff on Amazon Prime a few days ago, I rewatched it.
Not long after Amazon released Reacher this last February they announced that a second season had been approved. I figured maybe I should reread the second book, Die Trying, in preparation for a hopefully February release of season two on Amazon. Because I have read most of the Reacher books multiple times as soon as I read the first couple pages I knew the basic outline of what happens.
Book #2 starts with a kidnapping that Reacher inadvertently stumbles into and gets swept up along with the kidnappee. Then there is a cross-country trip in the back of a truck along with the victim who turns out is an FBI agent and daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and goddaughter of the President. So far so good, but then it devolves into a Montana militia group declaring independence and stolen nuclear missiles and the US military, etc. I’m thinking that this would be hard to translate into a 8 episode series. Turns out I need not have worried.
I went looking online to see if their were hints as to when the second season would be coming out, February again maybe, and discovered that the second series was based on the eleventh book, Bad Luck and Trouble. Off to the book and after reading the first page I thought, “Ooh, this is a good one.” It also, to me anyway, seems a lot easier to adapt to the small screen.
And maybe they knew this was what they were going next because one of the things I wondered about in season one when they introduced a character that really doesn’t show until book six, Frances Neagley. She was his sergeant back when Reacher was in the Army and part of his command of the 110th MP Special Investigation Unit. Bad Luck and Trouble is about getting the old gang of the 110th back together to find out what happened to one of their members present day. Neagley’s early entry into the series in season one brought a bit of foreshadowing to season two when she uses the phrase, ‘You do not mess with the Special Investigators’ which is a central to the plot of the eleventh book (and perhaps the first time it is used in the books.)