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LEE CHILD ...
... was born in the exact
geographic center of England, in the heart of the industrial
badlands. Never saw a tree until he was twelve. It was the sort of
place where if you fell in the river, you had to go to the hospital
for a mandatory stomach pump. The sort of place where minor disputes
were settled with box cutters and bicycle chains. He's got the scars
to prove it.
But he survived, got an education, and went to
law school, but only because he didn't want to be a lawyer. Without
the pressure of aiming for a job in the field, he figured it would
be a relaxing subject to study. He spent most of the time in the
university theater - to the extent that he had to repeat several
courses, because he failed the exams - and then went to work for
Granada Television in Manchester, England. Back then, Granada was a
world-famous production company, known for shows like Brideshead
Revisited, Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect and Cracker. Lee worked
on the broadcast side of the company, so his involvement with the
good stuff was limited. But he remembers waiting in the canteen line
with people like Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Natalie Wood and
Michael Apted. And he says that being involved with more than 40,000
hours of the company's program output over an eighteen-year stay
taught him a thing or two about telling a story. He also wrote
thousands of links, trailers, commercials and news stories, most of
them on deadlines that ranged from fifteen minutes to fifteen
seconds. So the thought of a novel-a-year didn't worry him too much,
in his next career.
But why a next career? He was fired,
back in 1995, that's why. It was the usual Nineties downsizing
thing. After eighteen years, he was an expensive veteran, and he was
also the union organizer, and neither thing fit the company's plan
for the future. And because of the union involvement, he wasn't on
too many alternative employers' wish lists, either. So he became a
writer, because he couldn't think of anything else to do. He had an
idea for a character who had suffered the same downsizing experience
but who was taking it completely in his stride. And he figured if he
brought the same total commitment to his audience that he'd seen his
television peers develop, he could get something going. He named the
character Jack Reacher and wrote Killing Floor as fast as he could.
He needed to sell it before his severance check ran out. He made it
with seven weeks to spare, and luckily the book was an instant hit,
selling strongly all around the world, and winning both the Anthony
Award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel. It led to contracts
for at least nine more Reacher books, which currently extend all the
way to the year 2006.
Lee moved from the UK to the US in the
summer of 1998. He lives just outside New York City, with his
American wife, Jane. They have a grown-up daughter, Ruth, and a
small dog called Jenny. Lee fills his spare time with music,
reading, and the New York Yankees. He likes to travel, for
vacations, but especially on promotion tours so he can meet his
readers, to whom he is eternally grateful.
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