Lee Child - Wikipedia

Thank you, my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that October 29 is the anniversary of the birth of British author who writes thriller novels James Dover Grant CBE "primarily known by his pen name Lee Child," who may well be "best known for his Jack Reacher novel series."
James Dover Gran pen name Lee Child married Jane in 1975 and they have daughter named Ruth.

Why Jack Reacher author Lee Child says he doesn't care about newspaper critics | ITV News
"Lee Child has 100 million reasons to ignore the snobbery towards crime fiction writers. That's how many Jack Reacher novels he has sold worldwide."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rA2IzeDOQo

Images:
1. Lee Child profile.
2. Lee Child, right, with his brother Andrew in 1973.
3. Lee Child 'I felt alienated by the experience and decided to stay away from corporate employment'.
4. Lee Child with Michael Cavacini at ThrillerFest IX in July 2014.

Background from prabook.com/web/lee.child/960354
Lee Child is a British author who writes in a genre of thriller, crime fiction, and mystery. His novels are based on the adventures of Jack Reacher, a former American military policeman wandering the United States.

Background
Lee Child was born [with the name James Dover Grant] on October 29, 1954, in Coventry, United Kingdom. His father was a civil servant. He is the second of four sons. He was raised in Birmingham.

Education
Lee Child attended Cherry Orchard Primary School in Handsworth Wood until the age of 11. He also studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham. He then studied law at the University of Sheffield and received a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1977. While studying law, Child became interested in theatre. In 2009 he received a Doctor of Letters degree at the University of Sheffield.

Career
After graduating, Lee Child worked in commercial television. He joined Granada Television in Manchester in 1977 and worked for eighteen years as a presentation director during British TV's "golden age." During his tenure, his company produced Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. Child was involved in the transmission of more than 40,000 hours of programming for Granada, writing thousands of commercials and news stories. But he was fired in 1995 as a result of corporate restructuring.

Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars' worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor (1997), the first in the Jack Reacher series. Writing this book, Child often says he had two muses: fear and hunger. Then in 1998, he moved to the United States. In the Jack Reacher series, a former major in the United States Army Military Police Corps, Reacher roams the United States taking odd jobs and investigating suspicious and frequently dangerous situations.

The Reacher novels are written either in the first-person or third-person. The schedule for the Reacher series is one-per-year, except for 2010 when two were published. Most of the novels are set in the United States, in locales ranging from major metropolitan areas like New York City and Los Angeles to small towns in the Midwestern and Southern United States. Based on the novel One Shot, the film Jack Reacher starred Tom Cruise in the title role was released in 2012. In 2016 was released the film Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. On 14 November 2018, Child announced that he made a deal with Skydance Television and Paramount Television to produce a Jack Reacher series.

In 2007, Child collaborated with 14 other writers to create the 17-part serial thriller The Chopin Manuscript, narrated by Alfred Molina. On 30 June 2008, it was announced that he would be taking up a Visiting Professorship at the University of Sheffield from November 2008. In 2009, he funded 52 Jack Reacher scholarships for students at the university.

Lee Child also wrote some short stories featuring Jack Reacher including "Too Much Time" (novella), "Deep Down", "Everyone Talks", "Guy Walks into a Bar", "High Heat" (novella), "James Penney's New Identity", "Maybe They Have a Tradition", and other. His most recent book is Blue Moon: A Jack Reacher Novel (2019).

Achievements
Achievement Lee Child of Lee Child
Lee Child was recognized as the author of the year in 2019 by The Bookseller. He was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to Literature. He received Anthony Award, Barry Award twice, British Book Award, Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize, WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award, Nero Award, Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, and RBA Prize for Crime Writing.

In 2005 he also received The Bob Kellogg Good Citizen Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Internet Writing Community and Diamond Dagger in 2013. More than 22 million copies of his novels were in print worldwide. Foreign rights in the Jack Reacher series have been sold in more than 96 countries.

Works
Jack Reacher (The Jack Reacher series consists of twenty-four books. Ex...)

Views
Lee Child is greatly influenced by John McDonald and Travis McGee, Stephen King, and Alistair MacLean. He also loves the work of Jonathan Franzen and Ian McEwan.
He always begins writing each new Jack Reacher novel on September 1st.

Lee Child is also engaged in charity. In January 2012, Grant donated £10,000 (about US$16,000 at the time) towards a new vehicle for Brecon Mountain Rescue Team in Wales where his brother is a senior member of the team.

Quotations: "People want order restored and they can't get it in the real world but they can get it in the fictional realm."
1. "Look, I’m a populist thriller writer, and I’m perfectly comfortable with that but I am intrigued by newspaper coverage. Everything in newspapers is tailored to what people want to consume - the sports section features rugby and football, not curling and croquet - yet the literary coverage is entirely aspirational rather than devoted to what they know their readers are actually consuming."
2. "I really enjoyed working with Cruise. He's a really, really nice guy. We had a lot of fun."
3. "Hope for the best, plan for the worst."
4. "Don't get it right - get it written!"
5. "Never forget a Favor, Never forgive a Slight!"
6. "Long experience had taught me that absolute silence is the best way. Say something, and it can be misheard. Misunderstood. Misinterpreted. It can get you convicted. It can get you killed."
7. "Nothing of value was ever achieved in the morning."
8."Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into."

Membership
Lee Child is a member and annual sponsor of Thrillerfest. He was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America in 2009.

Personality
Lee Child loves black coffee.

He never ever pays vehicular citations he receives (parking tickets, speeding) without first contesting them in court.

He is a smoker who started at age 11 and only ever quit once for 10 months in 1985 to save enough money to buy a CD player.

Physical Characteristics: Lee Child is tall and slim. He is 6’5″. He has sandy-blonde hair and blue eyes.

Interests
reading, music, traveling

Sport & Clubs
soccer, Yankees, Aston Villa, and Marseilles

Connections
Lee Child married his wife Jane in 1975. The marriage produced one child, a daughter Ruth.

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Great bio share sir, thank you.

You hit the nail on its proverbial head with this post, Maj Marty Hogan!!! Lee Child is one of my top 10 writers & I have read every one of his books! His Jack Reacher series is absolutely awesome! I wish He could write more than one book per year, but I know that it is no small feat to develop & craft the magnificent stories He writes in less than a year!
Great, great post, Marty!!!