Affair (Child) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—November 30, 1953
• Raised—Coventry, England, UK
• Education—Sheffield University
• Awards—Anthony and the Barry Awards for Best First
   Mystery; Barry and Nero Awards for Best Novel
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, USA


Lee Child, whose real name is Jim Grant, is a British thriller writer. He is the author of 16 Jack Reacher thrillers, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers Worth Dying For, 61 Hours, Gone Tomorrow, Nothing to Lose, and Bad Luck and Trouble. His debut, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Mystery, and The Enemy won both the Barry and the Nero awards for Best Novel. Foreign rights in the Jack Reacher series have sold in more than fifty territories.

Each of Child's novels follows the adventures of a former American Military Policeman, Jack Reacher, who wanders the United States.

Though Grant was born in Coventry, England, his parents moved him and his three brothers to Handsworth Wood in Birmingham when he was four years old, so the boys could get a better education. Grant attended Cherry Orchard Primary School in Handsworth Wood until the age of 11 and was one of the cleverest boys in his year. He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham, also the alma mater of J. R. R. Tolkien and Enoch Powell. His father was a civil servant and his younger brother, Andrew Grant, is also a thriller novelist.

Some of Grant's early influences include Enid Blyton, W.E. Johns, and Alistair MacLean.

In 1974, at age 20, Grant attended law school in Sheffield at Sheffield University, though he had no intention of entering the legal profession and, during his student days, worked backstage in a theatre. Instead, he took a job in commercial television after graduating.

In January 2012, Grant donated £10,000 towards a new vehicle for Brecon Mountain Rescue Team. He offered the donation because his brother is a senior member of the team. The team's former control vehicle was written off after a collision in 2011.

His wife Jane is from New York.

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, news stories, and trailers. He stayed with Granada 1977-1995 and ended his career there with two years as a trade union shop steward.

After being let go from his job because of corporate restructuring, he decided he wanted to start writing novels, stating they are "the purest form of entertainment." In 1997, his first novel, Killing Floor, was published and he moved to the United States in the summer of 1998.

He has said that he chose the name Reacher for the central character in his novels because he is himself tall and, in a supermarket (Asda in Kendal, Cumbria, when he was living in Kirkby Lonsdale), his wife Jane told him: "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 Reacher series are written in first person, while others are written in the third person.

In 2007, Grant collaborated with 14 other writers to create the 17-part serial thriller The Chopin Manuscript narrated by Alfred Molina that was broadcast weekly on Audible.com from 25 September 2007 to 13 November 2007.

On 30 June 2008, it was announced that Lee Child would be taking up a Visiting Professorship at the University of Sheffield in the UK from November 2008. In 2009, Child funded 52 Jack Reacher scholarships for students at the university.

Child was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America in 2009. (From Wikipedia and Barnes & Noble.)