{"id":5983,"date":"2026-09-22T21:00:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T21:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/?post_type=_author&#038;p=5983"},"modified":"2026-09-22T21:00:35","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T21:00:35","slug":"lee-child","status":"publish","type":"_author","link":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/_author\/lee-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee Child"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":3704,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"wds_primary_isdb_country":0,"footnotes":""},"isdb_country":[],"class_list":["post-5983","_author","type-_author","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":{"isdb_author_id":"P0000168","author_display_name":"Lee Child","given_name":"Jamesx","middle_name":"Dover","family_name":"Grant","pen_name":"","other_names":"","author_gender":"Unknown","author_portrait":"","short_biography":"","full_biography":"<h1>Basics<\/h1>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Real name: <\/strong>James Dover Grant. Lee Child is a pen name.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Born: <\/strong>29 October 1954, Coventry, Warwickshire, England. Living; age 71.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Nationality: <\/strong><\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Residence: <\/strong>Sources disagree. His UK publisher says he now lives in England's Lake District. His US publisher still lists New York City and Wyoming. He lived in the US for decades after moving there in the late 1990s.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Family: <\/strong>Married to Jane Grant since 1975. One daughter, Ruth. One of four brothers; his younger brother Andrew Grant (Andrew Child) is also a thriller novelist and now co-writes the Reacher books.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Honours: <\/strong>Anthony Award for Best First Novel (Killing Floor); CWA Diamond Dagger (2013); Author of the Year at the British Book Awards (2019); CBE in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Sales: <\/strong>Publishers report more than 100 million copies sold, with Reacher rights sold in 100 territories.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<h1>Education and Early Life<\/h1>\r\nHis family moved from Coventry to Birmingham when he was four. He attended Cherry Orchard Primary School and then King Edward's School, Birmingham, the same school JRR Tolkien attended. As a boy he read Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven books and Captain W. E. Johns's Biggles stories.\r\n\r\nHe studied law at the University of Sheffield and graduated with an LLB in 1977. He never planned to practise law and spent much of his time in the university theatre.\r\n<h1>Career Before Writing<\/h1>\r\nFrom 1977 to 1995 he worked at Granada Television in Manchester as a presentation director, handling the transmission of programmes and writing thousands of commercials and news stories. Granada produced Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect and Cracker during his time there. He spent his last two years as a trade union shop steward.\r\n\r\nIn 1995, aged 40, he was made redundant in a corporate restructuring. He bought paper and pencils and started his first novel.\r\n<h1>Writing Career<\/h1>\r\nKilling Floor was published in 1997 and won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel. He moved to the United States in 1998 and produced roughly one Reacher novel a year from then on.\r\n\r\nThe pen name reportedly comes from a family joke. The family pronounced the Renault Le Car as \"Lee Car\", and called his daughter \"Lee Child\" in the same way.\r\n\r\nFrom 2020 his brother Andrew Grant, writing as Andrew Child, joined him as co-author. Their joint titles include The Sentinel (2020), Better Off Dead, No Plan B, The Secret, In Too Deep and Exit Strategy (2025, book 30). Book 31, Chain Reaction, is due 20 October 2026. Andrew is expected to carry the series forward.\r\n\r\nA cooperative biography, The Reacher Guy by Heather Martin, covers his life. Andy Martin's Reacher Said Nothing follows the writing of Make Me.\r\n<h1>Genres and Subgenres<\/h1>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Main genres: <\/strong>Crime fiction, mystery, thriller.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Subgenres: <\/strong>Action thriller; lone-hero or drifter thriller; military investigation story; conspiracy thriller.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nMany books follow a Western template. Reacher arrives in a town he has never visited, finds a crime or a racket, works with a few locals to fix it, and leaves on the next bus.\r\n<h1>Series and Works<\/h1>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Jack Reacher novels: <\/strong>30 published (1997 to 2025), with book 31 due October 2026.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>No Middle Name (2017): <\/strong>The complete collection of Reacher short stories.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Neagley novels: <\/strong>Zero Margin, co-written by Child and Yasmin Angoe, due March 2027.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nThe novels are not published in Reacher's own chronological order. Some, starting with The Enemy (2004), are prequels set during his Army career.\r\n<h1>Recurring and Well-Known Characters<\/h1>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Jack Reacher: <\/strong>Former US Army Military Police major. He left the Army and drifts across the United States with no fixed address, carrying little more than a toothbrush.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Frances Neagley: <\/strong>His former sergeant in the 110th Special Investigations Unit. Central to Bad Luck and Trouble and now the lead of her own TV series and novel.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Susan Turner: <\/strong>Commander of Reacher's old unit, featured in 61 Hours, Worth Dying For, A Wanted Man and Never Go Back. Returns in Chain Reaction.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Joe Reacher: <\/strong>His older brother, a Treasury investigator whose death drives Killing Floor.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Leon Garber: <\/strong>His former commanding officer and mentor.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Jodie Garber: <\/strong>Leon's daughter and Reacher's love interest in Tripwire.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>110th unit veterans: <\/strong>David O'Donnell, Tony Swan, Calvin Franz and others, who appear in Bad Luck and Trouble.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<h1>Best Known Work<\/h1>\r\nThe Jack Reacher series as a whole. Killing Floor (1997) is the key single title: the debut, the award winner, and the basis of the first TV season. One Shot (2005) is also widely known as the source of the first film.","author_status":false,"author_official_website":"","author_wikipedia_url":"","author_agencies":false,"birth_date":"19541029","death_date":null,"birthplace":"Coventry, England","nationality":"British","author_education":"","author_family":"","occupation_service":"","author_intelligence_service":"","author_country":null,"author_awards":null,"author_books":"","author_series":"","author_characters":"","author_publishers":"","author_organizations":"","author_adaptations":null,"authority_identifier":"","author_record_status":"Published","author_verification_status":"Verified","author_editorial_notes":"","author_sources":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_author\/5983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_author"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/_author"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_author\/5983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"isdb_country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/isdb_country?post=5983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}