Past Tense by Lee Child Delacorte 
 
 You’re on a plane. You’re on a train. You’re wheeling through American space, and you’re feeling it: the hum of the void, the up-for-grabs-ness of it all. Out here there’s no protection. Good customer service, if you’re lucky, but no protection. Out here there is only the crackling feral mind: dominance, appetite, predation, pitiless allegiance to the pack. Who are you going to read, in this condition? Henry James? No. You’re going to read Lee Child. 
 
 Rune Fisker 
 
 Someone, somewhere, buys one of Child’s Jack Reacher crime thrillers every 13 seconds. This is a celebrated factoid, and I believe it. An atmosphere of pullulating need surrounds these productions. At transportation hubs across the country, they are clutched and consumed by Americans in motion. Child, the pusher, bangs out a book a year. Born James Grant and raised in Birmingham, England, he went to J. R. R. Tolkien’s old school, and has seen Waiting for Godot at least 39 times. He has an industrial caffeine habit, and he smokes like a chimney. Heavy schedule, heavy fuel. Andy Martin’s fascinating Reacher Said Nothing, in which he literally sits in a room and watches Child write a Reacher novel, is also an account of him sitting in a room and watching Child go through coffee and cigarettes: 20-ish cups, a pack a day. And then, as the word count—and the pace—increases, sugar: Snickers bars and bowls of Sugar Smacks. 
 
 I read my first Reacher book along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, between New York and Boston, and I remember nothing about it except a sensation of empty velocity (with just a hint of train-clatter). It ran through me, leaving a clean and brilliant hole. Jack Reacher is a former military policeman turned super-drifter who roams America with only a toothbrush and the clothes he’s standing up in. Bus station to bus station, diner to diner. Nothing slows him down except a plot, because Reacher is a man for whom the phrase moral compass was invented: His code determines his direction. Where dwells unrighteousness, where redress is demanded, there goes Reacher. In The Midnight Line, it’s the glint of a West Point class ring in a pawnshop window, on “the sad side of a small town,” that detains him. The ring is sized for a woman. What proud West Pointer, wonders Reacher (who went there himself), would pawn her class ring if she didn’t have to? Is there a woman in distress, under duress, somewhere nearby? He must look into it. Something might need to be straightened out. And so, like children going into the Black Forest, we enter the realm of story, holding Reacher’s huge and dangerous hand. 

 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Tom Cruise: Not to scale 
 
 Action hero Jack Reacher is to get a reboot for the small screen with a new actor in the lead role after creator Lee Child admitted Tom Cruise, who played him in two films, is too short. 
 
 In Child's books, Reacher is described as 6ft 5in tall with hands the size of dinner plates. Cruise is 5ft 7in. 
 
 "Cruise, for all his talent, didn't have that physicality," Child told BBC Radio Manchester's Mike Sweeney. 
 
 The author said a deal was signed last week to make a new streaming show. 
 
 Readers had complained about Cruise's suitability to play the imposing former major in the US military police since his casting was announced in 2011. 
 
 "I really enjoyed working with Cruise. He's a really, really nice guy. We had a lot of fun," Child told the station. 
 
 "But ultimately the readers are right. The size of Reacher is really, really important and it's a big component of who he is. 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Lee Child heaped praise on Cruise's talent and work rate 
 
 "The idea is that when Reacher walks into a room, you're all a little nervous just for that first minute. And Cruise, for all his talent, didn't have that physicality. 
 
 "So what I've decided to do is - there won't be any more movies with Tom Cruise. Instead we're going to take it to Netflix or something like that. Long form streaming television, with a completely new actor. 
 
 "And I want all those readers who were upset about Tom Cruise to help me out - participate in choosing the right actor for the TV series. We're rebooting and starting over and we're going to try and find the perfect guy." 
 
 The first Jack Reacher film, directed and adapted by Christopher McQuarrie, debuted in 2012. Cruise got mostly positive reviews and it made $218m (£167m) at box offices around the world. 
 
 But the decision to abandon the film franchise and move to the small screen could have as much to do with the reception for the 2016 sequel as Cruise's stature. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back grossed $162m (£124m) and received mixed reviews. 
 
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– There's a Jack Reacher TV show in the works, but don't expect Tom Cruise in the lead role. At 5'7", he's too short, according to author Lee Child, whose books describe Reacher as 6'5" with hands as big as dinner plates. "I really enjoyed working with Cruise [on two Reacher films]" but he "didn't have that physicality," Child tells the BBC, adding that plenty of fans had complained about the casting. "The idea is that when Reacher walks into a room, you're all a little nervous." Out this month with his 23rd book in the series, per the Atlantic, Child says "there won't be any more movies with Tom Cruise." Instead, "a completely new actor" will be cast for the show, which will be suitable for "Netflix or something like that." (Critics will be hoping for less of this.)