Lee Child


James Dover Grant , primarily known by his pen name Lee Child, is a British author who writes thriller novels and is best known for his Jack Reacher novel series. The books follow the adventures of a former American military policeman, Jack Reacher, who wanders the United States. His first novel, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony Award and the 1998 Barry Award for Best First Novel.

Early life and education

Grant was born in Coventry, England. His Northern Irish Protestant father, who was born in Belfast, was a tax inspector at the Inland Revenue who lived in the house where the singer Van Morrison was later born.. His father also fought in WW2 and had been in the armoured column that arrived at Belsen to liberate the camp in 1945. His mother began working at 19 at the Inland Revenue but had to leave her job when she married his father.
He is the second of four sons; his younger brother, Andrew Grant, is also a thriller novelist. He has an older brother called Richard who he described as a "nuclear scientist".
Grant's family moved to Handsworth Wood in Birmingham when he was four years old so that the boys could receive a better education. Grant attended Cherry Orchard Primary School in Handsworth Wood until the age of 11. He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham.
In 1974, at the age of 20, Grant studied law at the 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 degree from the University of Sheffield in 1977 and returned to the university to receive an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2009.

Career

Television production career

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. Grant was involved in the transmission of more than 40,000 hours of programmes 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.

Writing career

In August 1994, Grant was informed that his job was due to be eliminated in a corporate restructuring, and in anticipation of the coming job loss, he decided to start writing a novel in September 1994. The first book was initially titled Bad Luck and Trouble and was about drug money, but changed to Killing Floor and about counterfeiting on the suggestions of his agent and his publisher. In March 1997, Killing Floor was published, and became a great success. Grant moved to the United States in the summer of 1998. He starts each new book of the series on the anniversary of his starting the first book.
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 "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.
Grant has said that he came up with the name Reacher for the central character in his novels when he was grocery shopping with his wife, Jane, at Asda supermarket in Kendal, Cumbria, when he was living at Kirkby Lonsdale. Grant's height often leads to people asking him to get something for them from a high shelf. Jane once joked: "'Hey, if this writing thing doesn't pan out, you could always be a reacher in a supermarket.'... 'I thought, Reacher – good name.'"
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 – "Somebody does a very bad thing, and Reacher takes revenge" – driven by his anger at the downsizing at Granada. Although English, he deliberately chose to write American-style thrillers.
In 2007, Grant collaborated with 14 other writers to create the 17-part serial thriller The Chopin Manuscript, narrated by Alfred Molina. This was broadcast weekly on Audible.com between 25 September 2007 and 13 November 2007.
Grant worked as a visiting professor at the University of Sheffield from November 2008. In 2009, Grant funded 52 Jack Reacher scholarships for students at the university.
Grant was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America in 2009. Grant was the Programming Chair for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in 2018, part of the Harrogate International Festivals portfolio.
In 2019, it was announced that Child would curate a new TV show called Lee Child: True Crime. The show would 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. He intended to write the next few books with Grant before passing the series entirely over to him.

Writing style

Grant's prose has been described as "hardboiled" and "commercial" in style. In a 2012 interview, Grant said many aspects of the Jack Reacher novels were meant to maintain the books' profitability, rather than for literary reasons. For instance, Jack Reacher was given one French parent in part to increase the series' appeal in France. The interviewer wrote that Grant "didn't apologise about the commercial nature" of his fiction. He called novels the "purest form of entertainment."
Child has listed John D. MacDonald, Alistair MacLean, and Robert B. Parker as influences on the Reacher series.

Other activities

In 2019, Child collaborated with musicians Jennifer and Scott Smith of the group Naked Blue on an album of music exploring Jack Reacher, in song. He contributed vocals to the track "Reacher Said Nothing."
In 2020, Child joined the Booker Prize judging panel, alongside chair Margaret Busby, Sameer Rahim, Lemn Sissay, and Emily Wilson.
In December 2025, Child was a guest on BBC Radio 4's programme Desert Island Discs, with his favourite choice of music being "So What" by Miles Davis.

Philanthropy

In January 2012, Grant donated £10,000 for a new vehicle for the Brecon Mountain Rescue Team in Wales.
Grant is an annual sponsor and original member of ThrillerFest.

Personal life

Grant married his wife Jane in 1975. They have a daughter. They moved to New York state in 1998 at the beginning of his writing career.
Grant is a fan of Aston Villa Football Club; his books sometimes include the names of Aston Villa players.
In 2013, Grant rejected claims that he wrote while under the influence of marijuana that were initially reported in the Daily Mail.

Works

Novels

Pub. orderTitleYearISBNPerspective
1Killing Floor19971st Person
2Die Trying19983rd Person
3Tripwire19993rd Person
4The Visitor, or Running Blind 20002nd/3rd Person
5Echo Burning20013rd Person
6Without Fail20023rd Person
7Persuader20031st Person
8The Enemy20041st Person
9One Shot20053rd Person
10The Hard Way20063rd Person
11Bad Luck and Trouble20073rd Person
12Nothing to Lose20083rd Person
13Gone Tomorrow20091st Person
1461 Hours20103rd Person
15Worth Dying For20103rd Person
16The Affair20111st Person
17A Wanted Man20123rd Person
18Never Go Back20133rd Person
19Personal20141st Person
20Make Me20153rd Person
21Night School20163rd Person
22The Midnight Line20173rd Person
23Past Tense20183rd Person
24Blue Moon20193rd Person
25^The Sentinel20203rd Person
26^Better Off Dead20211st Person
27^No Plan B20223rd Person
28^The Secret20233rd Person
29^In Too Deep20243rd Person
30^Exit Strategy20253rd Person

Note: For consistency, ISBN is that of the Bantam Press hardcover, first printing only.

^ by Lee Child and Andrew Child