Lee Child was born in 1954 in Coventry, UK. His name prior to his writing career was James Dover Grant until he began using his pen name. 

He is probably best known as the creator of the Jack Reacher character and novels which have been hugely successful and some of which have been made into Hollywood Blockbusters.

So where did it all start? He was educated at King Edward's School in Birmingham which is in the centre of England. From there he went on to do a law degree at the University of Sheffield. He said that he never had any intention of pursuing a career in the law – how fortunate for us, his readers!

He has a brother called Andrew Grant who is also a successful writer.

Lee Child’s adventure books follow Jack Reacher - man of mystery - who dispenses his own kind of justice. The character was formerly an American Military Policeman and a good one at that!

Killing Floor was his first novel which was published in 1997 and it won two awards unsurprisingly - the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel.

For a time Lee Child worked in a theatre and then went into commercial television in Granada TV where he worked on many well-known and respected UK television productions. He was made redundant from this job and following this he began to write.

 Following the success of his first novel he moved to the USA where his career as a fiction writer of crime thrillers with a heavy dose of revenge skyrocketed.

The nom de plume Lee Child is aid to come from the way he said the name of Renault's Le Car when he was a child which moved forward to ‘Lee Child’ for his daughter ‘Ruth’.

Lee Child is not just a truly great writer of crime fiction and mystery thrillers. He is also a true inspiration as someone who can take a terrible blow in life such as redundancy later in his career who dusts himself down and through sheer ability and grit rises up way higher. Whenever I start one of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books I remember that star quality which seem to give his books greater resonance for me.

Though I do not claim to be in Lee Child’s league by any means, if you enjoy his adventure books then maybe you would enjoy my book – See Glass by Ido Graf. 

See Glass is available now in paperback, ebook, large print version and audiobook on Amazon.

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Photo by Sam Burriss on Unsplash

Photo by Chris Henry on Unsplash