Lee Child : The accidental thriller writer
The author of the bestselling Jack Reacher series turned to writing after he was fired from the TV station at age 40
James Dover Grant, born on Oct 29, 1954, popularly known as Lee Child, is a British author who writes thriller novels. He is best known for his Jack Reacher novel series. The book follows the adventures of a former American military policeman, Jack Reacher, who wanders the United States.
His first novel. Killing Floor, published in 1997, was a runaway success and won both the Anthony Award and the 1998 Barry Award for Best First Novel.
Grant was born in Coventry. His Northern Irish father, who was born in Belfast, was a civil servant. He is the second of four sons, his younger brother, Andrew Grant, is also a thriller novelist.
Grant attended King Edward’s School in Birmingham when his family moved to Handsworth Wood.
In 1974, at the age of 20, Grant studied law at University of Sheffield, though he had no intention of entering the legal profession.
During his student days, he worked backstage in a theatre.
After graduating, he worked in commercial television. He received a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from the University of Sheffield in 1977 and returned to the university to receive an honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) in 2009.
Grant joined Granada Television, part of the UK’s ITV Network, in Manchester as a presentation director. There he was involved with shows including Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker.
He was involved in the transmission of more than 40,000 hours of programming for Granada, writing thousands of commercials and news stories. He worked at Granada from 1977 to 1995 and ended his career there with two years as a trade union shop steward.
In 1997, his first novel, Killing Floor, was published.
Grant moved to the US, where he married a New Yorker. He starts each new book of the series on the anniversary of his starting the first book after losing his job.
His pen name Lee comes from a mispronunciation of the name of Renault’s Le Car, as Lee Car. Calling anything Lee became a family gag. His daughter Ruth, was a “lee child”. The name has the advantage of placing his books alphabetically on bookshop and library shelves between crime fiction greats Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie.
Some books in the Jack Reacher series are written in the first person. While others are written in the third person. Grant has characterised the books as revenge stories, driven by his anger at the downsizing at Granada. Although English, he deliberately chose to write American-stye thrillers.
In 2009, Grant funded 52 Jack Reacher Scholarship for students at the university.
Grant was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America in 2009.
He was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America in 2009. He was also the Programming Chair for the Theakstons Ols Peculier Crime Writing Festival in 2018, part of the Harrogate International portfolio.
In 2019, it was announced that Grant would curate a new TV show called Lee Child: True Crime. The show will dramatise real-life crime stories from around the world and focus on average people who go to extraordinary lengths to fight crime or seek justice.
In January 2020, Grant announced that he would retire from writing the Jack Reacher series and hand it to his brother Andrew Grant, who would write further books of the series under the surname Child.
• Killing Floor (1997)
• Die Trying (1998)
• Tripwire (1999)
• The Visitor (2000); also published as Running Blind
• Echo Burning (2001)
• Without Fail (2002)
• Persuader (2003)
• The Enemy (2004)
• One Shot (2005)
• The Hard Way (2006)
• Bad Luck and Trouble (2007)
• Nothing to Lose (2008)
• Gone Tomorrow (2009)
• 61 Hours (2010)
• Worth Dying For (2010)
• The Affair (2011)
• A Wanted Man (2012)
• Never Go Back (2013)
• Personal (2014)
• Make Me (2015)
• Night School (2016)
• The Midnight Line (2017)
• Past Tense (2018)
• Blue Moon (2019)
