Lee Child

James Dover Grant (born 29 October 1954), 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.

In 1974, at the age of 20, Grant studied law at University of Sheffield, though he had no intention of entering the legal profession and, during his student days, 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.

Grant 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.

After losing his job because of corporate restructuring, Grant decided to start writing novels, stating they are "the purest form of entertainment."

His first novel, Killing Floor (1997), 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 who lived in the house where the singer Van Morrison was later born.

He is the second of four sons; his younger brother, Andrew Grant, is also a thriller novelist.

Grant's family relocated 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 1997, his first novel, Killing Floor, was published.

Child moved to the United States, where he married a New Yorker.

He starts each new book of the series on an 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 "Lee Child".

He places his books alphabetically on bookshop and library shelves between crime fiction greats Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie.

Grant has said that he chose the name Reacher for the central character in his novels because he himself is tall and when they were grocery shopping his wife Jane remarked: "'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.

A 2012 interview suggested that many aspects of the Jack Reacher novels were deliberately aimed at maintaining the books' profitability, rather than for literary reasons.

For instance, making Jack Reacher have one parent who was French was suggested as being partly because the presence of only American members of Reacher's family would limit the series' appeal in France.

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 be curating 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, Child announced that he would be retiring from writing the Jack Reacher series and handing 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 together with Grant before passing the series entirely over to him.

Grant's prose has been described as "hardboiled" and "commercial" in style.