The golden age of detective drama on Prime Video has recently led to a curious juxtaposition between two very different men at two very different points in their lives: The young Sherlock Holmes in Young Sherlock and Jack Reacher from Reacher.
Where one narrative follows the formative years of the most popular detective in literature and the other focuses on a nomadic ex-army investigator, their personalities and backgrounds show remarkable symmetry upon closer examination. However, these similarities are no coincidence.
Lee Child, the author who created Jack Reacher, has admitted that the character was loosely influenced by the iconic detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Child referred to Reacher’s parallels to Holmes as a very conscious homage, noting that the character was meant to be a fusion of an intellectual deductive and a physical one. Here’s what we know.
Reacher’s lineage in Young Sherlock’s character
The impact of Sherlock Holmes on Jack Reacher can be seen when looking at their core attributes. Holmes, who first appeared in Doyle’s 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet, is known for his remarkable deductive reasoning. Yet readers who have been following the cases for years know there is much more to the detective than cerebral ruminations. Holmes is also physically capable, good at boxing and martial arts, and can fend for himself when he gets into perilous situations.
Lee Child also similarly created Reacher. Jack Reacher is famous for his fearsome size and fighting skills, but when it comes down to it, his greatest weapon is his mind. In the first novel in the series, Killing Floor, Reacher demonstrates this skill when he makes accurate guesses about a policeman’s private life based on minuscule hints. Scenes like these are reminders of Holmes’ trademark observational prowess, echoing Child’s recognition that the detective was a primary inspiration.
Child has also named other influences, like Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, but Holmes is by far the most clear literary antecedent. This combination of intellectual and physical activity was the element that let Reacher break away from most other traditional mystery detectives in crime fiction.
Here are some more parallels between Reacher and Holmes, post-release of Young Sherlock
Having all been said, the decisive battle between Reacher and the colossal adversary Paulie in season three of the series is reminiscent of the iconic Holmes vs. Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls climax in the classic story “The Final Problem” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Child adds that the sequence was specifically conceived as a nod to Holmes’ best-known fight.
The introduction of Young Sherlock only makes parallels stand out more, as this series delves into a young Sherlock Holmes during his early years and the events that mold him. Based on the Young Sherlock Holmes books by Andrew Lane, the series centers on a teenage Holmes as he begins to develop the acute powers of observation and deduction that will one day make him the world’s greatest detective.
An interesting parallel with Reacher is how they were brought up. In the Reacher novels, Jack spends a sizable portion of his youth bouncing from one Army base to the next due to his father’s profession. Young Sherlock also shows Holmes emerging from the strict discipline of Victorian Oxford, surrounded by daunting establishments that seek to mould his mind.
But both are left with an outsider view of the world. Reacher is a drifter who declines to settle down and bow to institutions, and Holmes is a Victorian society detective who breaches social norms on a regular basis. So it’s showing how these two detectives came from the same legacy.
Edited by Amey Mirashi