GRANT
James
(Lee
Child)

• 1. Writing career

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 (1997), won both the Anthony Award and the 1998 Barry Award for Best First Novel.

Writing career

After losing his job because of corporate restructuring, Grant decided to start writing novels, which he later called "purest form of entertainment." 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". 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 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 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.