Chapter 1
Chronology of Lee Child’s Life
1954
Lee Child is born James Grant on October 29, 1954, in Coventry, England. His father is a civil servant who works for Inland Revenue as a tax inspector. He has three brothers. (The youngest, Andrew Grant, would also become a suspense novelist.) They live at 20 Ridgeway Avenue, Stivichall, a residential area of south Coventry.
1958
His parents move to Handsworth Wood, an affluent suburban neighborhood in northwest Birmingham, England. He enrolls in Cherry Orchard Primary School.
1959
He reads My Home in America, which he credits as the beginning of his “love-affair with the US . . . I had this feeling—I knew—that I was this New York boy trapped inside a boy living in Birmingham, England.” (Andy Martin, “Adventures of an Over-reacher,” The Independent.)
Late 1960s and early 1970s
He plays guitar in a rock-and-roll band called Dark Tower.
1970–1974
He attends King Edward’s School in Birmingham on a scholarship.
1974
He studies law at the University of Sheffield (Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England), though he has no intentions of becoming a barrister1. He works backstage on theater productions.
1975
He marries an American named Jane, whom he met at a college party the previous year at the University of Sheffield.
1977
He graduates from the University of Sheffield, LLB (with honors; law). Unable to immediately find professional work, he takes on menial work as an ice cream salesperson, and later, a demolition worker.
He answers a newspaper ad and begins work as a technical assistant at Granada Television (ITV Network) in Manchester, and soon becomes a presentation director,2 a position he holds for eighteen years. He oversees 40,000 hours worth of programming and writes commercials and news stories on short deadlines.
1980
Their only child, a daughter named Ruth, is born.
1988
February: He buys his first John D. MacDonald book, The Lonely Silver Rain, providing him a template for the Reacher series.
December 31: He attends a New Year’s Eve party with work colleagues, announcing, “I’m going to write books.”3
1994
He buys a house in Kirkby Lonsdale, on the River Lune in the South Lakeland district of Cumbria, England.
August: Seeing the handwriting on the wall, he realizes his full-time job will soon be a thing of the past and starts writing his first novel. It takes him four months to do so, writing in longhand at his dining room table, with six dollars’ worth of supplies (pencils, a pencil sharpener, an eraser, and three legal pads). He begins looking for a literary agent.
Lee Child Says . . .
ON WRITING YOUR NOVEL YOUR WAY
“Firstly, just get [the writing] done—finish it. Secondly, do not under any circumstances listen to any advice. And thirdly, write exactly what you want to write; it’s an organic product, not a laundry list of ingredients. Write what you want to write, even if you feel everyone will hate it. That’s the only way of having a living, breathing manuscript that has a chance of winning.”
1995
May: He’s unceremoniously fired from Granada Television.
Ruth turns fifteen years old.
Jane, who worked part time at a government tourist information bureau, begins working five days a week; Ruth waitresses at a local tea room to supplement the dwindling family income.
With his severance pay due to run out in weeks, Lee submits the manuscript of Killing Floor to British literary agent Darley Anderson, who takes Child on as a client. Anderson sells the book to G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a US publisher.
1997
March 17: Putnam publishes Killing Floor, the first Jack Reacher novel. It is Grant’s first appearance in print. Grant adopts a pen name—Lee Child. The fledgling novel wins two awards: the Barry Award (1997) and the Anthony Award (1998).
1998
July: He publishes Die Trying, the second Jack Reacher novel.
The family moves from the UK to the US, to the town of Pound Ridge in New York State.
1999
July: He publishes Tripwire, the third Jack Reacher novel.
October: He publishes “James Penney’s New Identity” in a UK anthology, Fresh Blood 3.
2000
April: He publishes Running Blind, the fourth Jack Reacher novel. (It is the only novel to date published under a different title—The Visitor—in the UK.)
2001
April: He publishes Echo Burning, the fifth Jack Reacher novel.
2002
April: He publishes Without Fail, the sixth Jack Reacher novel.
2003
April: He publishes Persuader, the seventh Jack Reacher novel.
Finding full-time work, Ruth moves out of the Pound Ridge house.
2004
April: He publishes The Enemy, the eighth Jack Reacher novel.
He moves to New York City and buys two condos in a high-rise building, where he separately sets up his office and a personal residence on different floors.
2005
April: He publishes One Shot, the ninth Jack Reacher novel. It is the basis for a major motion picture starring Tom Cruise titled Jack Reacher. Its success paves the way for a second movie, tentatively titled Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.
He wins a Barry Award for The Enemy.
2006
May: He publishes The Hard Way, the tenth Jack Reacher novel.
Lee Child Says . . .
“Never forget this is a long game. Penetrating the culture is slow and takes years and years and years. It literally is true that it takes ten years to become an overnight success. If you show up to a signing and there’s three people, don’t worry about it; tomorrow may only be two people. Next year, there will be more. Five years there will be still more. And ten years, they will be screaming and clapping as you walk in the room, so never get discouraged.”
2007
April: He publishes Bad Luck and Trouble, the eleventh Jack Reacher novel.
2008
March: He publishes Nothing to Lose, the twelfth Jack Reacher novel.
2009
February: He is elected president of the Mystery Writers of America and serves a one-year term.
April: He publishes Gone Tomorrow, the thirteenth Jack Reacher novel.
June: He publishes “Guy Walks into a Bar . . .” in the New York Times.
July: He receives an Honorary Doctor of Letters from his alma mater, the University of Sheffield.
He funds fifty-two Jack Reacher scholarships at the University of Sheffield, each in the amount of £2,000.
November: He publishes “Jack Reacher,” an essay about Reacher’s origins, in The Lineup, an anthology edited by Otto Penzler.
2010
March: He publishes 61 Hours, the fourteenth Jack Reacher novel.
October: He publishes Worth Dying For, the fifteenth Jack Reacher novel.
2011
July: He wins the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award for 61 Hours.
He is awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from De Montfort University (Leicester, England).
August: He publishes the Jack Reacher short story “Second Son” as an e-book and in multiple audio editions.
September: He publishes The Affair, the sixteenth Jack Reacher novel.
2012
June/July: He publishes the Jack Reacher short story “Everyone Talks” in Esquire magazine.
July: He publishes the Jack Reacher short story “Deep Down” as an e-book and multiple audio editions.
September: He publishes A Wanted Man, the seventeenth Jack Reacher novel.
November: He writes the introduction to a non-fiction book, Jack Reacher’s Rules, compiled by Val Hudson.
December: A Wanted Man is named the Crime Thriller of the Year at the Specsavers National Book Awards.
Jack Reacher is released as a major motion picture.
2013
July: The Crime Writers’ Association gives him a lifetime achievement award, the Cartier Diamond Dagger; the ceremony is held in Kings Place in London.
September: He publishes Never Go Back, the eighteenth Jack Reacher novel.
2014
September: He publishes Personal, the nineteenth Jack Reacher novel.
2015
September: He publishes Make Me, the twentieth Jack Reacher novel.
2016
October: Jack Reacher 2 to be released by Paramount Pictures.