The stock market bludgeoned investors in August, personal debt is soaring, many of the candidates running for president are less than impressive and there seems to be no end to the handwringing over the Federal Reserve’s next move. The world feels like a very uncertain place.

Ask yourself: What would Jack Reacher do?

Jack Reacher is the six-foot-five antihero of 20 popular novels by British author Lee Child. A former U.S. Army cop with a brilliant, logical mind, Reacher possesses no bank account, permanent address or personal belongings — except the clothes on his back and a toothbrush. This character, who roams America solving problems for the downtrodden, righting wrongs and delivering justice, has struck a chord with our status-obsessed, debt-burdened, disgruntled society.

Child himself is an interesting character. His given name is Jim Grant, and as lore has it, after years working in television, he lost his job at age 40, and used his anger to create Reacher, an American vigilante and eventual publishing powerhouse.

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Child, 60, sat down with MarketWatch before an appearance at a Manhattan Barnes & Noble celebrating his latest release — “Make Me,” (Delacorte Press/Random House) currently No. 1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list — and discussed how Reacher (and Child himself) view the world today. (Responses have been edited for length and clarity.)

MarketWatch: What’s been your (and Reacher’s) biggest money mistake?

Lee Child: Reacher’s and mine would be the same, really. And it’s only a mistake half of the time. I only have cash, I bank at the first national bank of Sealy Posturepedic. All my money is just in a checking or savings account. I have no investments, no stocks, no shares, no vehicles, no nothing. It just sits in the bank, which makes me look really smart in bad times. I never lost a cent, ever, in the ups and downs, but of course I’ve never made a cent either when times are good. So sometimes you look dumb and sometimes you look smart. I’ve got real estate, but I have no stocks, no mutual funds, nothing at all.

MW: Really? No market investments?

LC: I have no idea about investment or industry or Wall Street, I just don’t know anything about them. It would be presumptuous to assume that I do. I don’t want to put my hard-earned money into something I don’t understand because therefore it becomes a lottery and I’m probably doing it through somebody who will rip me off, so I prefer just to take the downside, which is in the good times I don’t make any big gains, but it’s all liquid, it’s all cash, and at least I know it’s there.

Obviously lots of folks make an absolute fortune shorting this or that or currency manipulation and so on, but it’s just not in my skill set and I just don’t trust people enough to do it for me.

MW: In any given book, Reacher beats up dozens of people (sometimes five or six at a time) and will kill several. This is done without sentiment or drama, and it all comes across as justified— to Reacher and the reader. Where does Reacher get his sense of right and wrong?

LC: I think that Reacher’s right and wrong is everybody’s right and wrong, it’s pretty much a universal ethic. That’s why people like him so much. People want to do the right thing, and have a consensus opinion of what is right and wrong. The frustration for the average reader is they can’t do the right thing all the time. In fact, they can do the right thing very little of the time because they are either defenseless, or they’re incapable, or they’re inhibited, or it’s a workplace situation where they’d get fired, so most people live with kind of a low level grumbling frustration that they can’t do the right thing, which means that they enjoy seeing it done on the page, which must mean it resonates with people.

MW: Reacher is very analog. He’s got no cellphone, he shies away from technology and the idea of being “connected” is anathema to him. In earlier novels Reacher wired cash to himself, eventually he capitulated and had to get an ATM card. How can this character who is off the grid exist in our digital world?

LC: I’m pretty analog myself and definitely a late adopter. I was probably the last person on the planet to have a cell phone. Being disconnected carries with it a certain amount of liberation. But you do have to work very hard to be off the grid. Reacher makes the point in one of the books, that what if around 1999 Congress had passed a law saying it’s compulsory to carry a radio transponder so the government can know where you are at all times? Can you imagine the outcry? But we do it voluntarily. It’s the same facts whichever way you look at it. In one way it’s a horrendous oppression, but we approach it as a delightful convenience.

And the ATM card? That came in after 9/11 because you just can’t call the bank and have money wired anymore, there’s so many different procedures you’ve got to do. But that was sort of a notional nod towards reality.

MW: Election season is in swing. What would Reacher think of the candidates?

LC: He would have issues with all of these candidates at the moment. He obviously comes from a military background with connections to an older political tradition and I think he’d be severely disappointed at how few and far between characters of substance are. The process has become so horrendous it’s scaring away the people you’d want to participate. He wouldn’t vote anyway; he’s not registered (he has no address). But this one would be hard to pick at this point.

MW: Soaring levels of student debt are a real problem in this country. What would Reacher say to young people starting out?

LC: An undergraduate degree means nothing when so many people have them, so you’ve got to have post-graduate qualifications and if you’re going to distinguish yourself it’s got to be from a good university so your debt is going to be enormous. It’s a gamble. You’re going to rack up an enormous debt. Are you going to be able to pay it back? And I think Reacher being Reacher would say, “Don’t worry about it, don’t go. Just get your high school diploma and get to work. And read.”

There’s an inflationary aspect to it. In the past, very few people went to college, so when you did, it meant something. If everyone goes to college now, it means nothing. They want a college degree for everything and that can’t possibly be useful. Education is wonderful for its own sake, but it’s not worth running up crippling debt for it. You can educate yourself at the library.

MW: Any life lessons from Reacher to the rest of the world?

LC: You don’t own things; things own you. If you want to be free, give them up.