He is one of the world’s most successful authors, enjoying an idyllic life in Cumbria. But Lee Child’s early years was scarred by violence. Coventry-born Child – real name Jim Grant – had a tough Birmingham upbringing. A bright boy, he won a place on academic merit to King Edward’s, then a direct-grant grammar school. “My parents were boring but they pushed us to do well at school, which puts a target on your back at 11, going to a posh school in Edgbaston,” Lee, 70, tells me. “Getting to school and back meant two fights a day, minimum, until we were teenagers.” Nicknamed “Grievous” at school, Grant started writing after losing his Granada TV job in 1994. His choice of pen-name was shrewd. On bookshop shelves, Child was a perfect fit between Chandler and Christie. His first Reacher novel, 1997’s Killing Floor, established his itinerant crime-fighter as a modern-day knight-errant, wandering the USA, standing up to injustice and levelling the odds for the little guy. Since then, his fictional ex-military cop has conquered the world. More than 200 million Reacher books have sold across 101 countries in the last 28 years. “Reacher is basically me when I was 9,” he says. “Everything was settled by violence. It was a ridiculous toxic masculinity thing, where you can’t indulge your emotions.”
At 6ft 4, Child is an inch shorter than his creation, and five stones lighter, but possessed of the same inner steel. Living in New York in the late 90s, when he saw an obnoxious drunk abuse a small Sikh taxi driver, he raced to the cabbie’s aid. The drunk punched him in the face. “I beat the s*** out of him,” he says. Lee is gaunt but healthy, despite smoking for 60 years, with a jaw like a blacksmith’s anvil – “You could hang a kettle off my chin,” he jokes. He’s also sharp, lucid, and candid. A dream interview. Gangs were rife growing up near Handsworth Park – “it was like no man’s land,” he says. “But as you enter your teens, you’re looking for identity; it’s more of a cultural community than a gang.”
He found his teenage through music. Hearing the Beatles’ She Loves You aged 8 was transformative, he says. “It was August 23, 1963. I was depressed. I was in a boring family with a boring life. The Midlands, postwar, were as dead as a doornail. All the glory was in the past. “Hearing that opening 11 seconds of chorus was like the sun coming out. It was joy, happiness, frivolity, energy. It changed my life.” He progressed through the Stones to Cream and then worked backwards to the blues giants that Jack Reacher adores, via John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. Later the Coventry 2-Tone bands like The Specials and The Selecter, local reggae combo Steel Pulse and UB40 floated his boat. After studying law at Sheffield University, Lee joined Granada TV as a trainee in 1977, becoming one of five studio directors. His new Manchester friends included Tony Wilson of Hacienda fame. “He was a shop steward in the NUJ and I was a shop steward in the technicians’ union.”
All his TV backroom work was live and thwart with challenges. On May 5, 1980, the SAS were about to end the Iranian Embassy siege. “It was a bank holiday and the senior guy was shagging someone in the car park so I had to handle that newsflash request. We were transmitting Coronation Street and they wanted to cut to the news, but I wouldn’t let them. I think the SAS were watching because as soon as we hit the end credits, in they went. It was the longest newsflash in British TV history.” Sharing canteens and a bar with Coronation Street actors was surreal. “They weren’t paid that much then, but culturally they were big stars. Geoffrey Hughes, who played Eddie Yeats, dropped in for coffee regularly.”
Sacked after 18 years of service, Lee wrote Killing Floor at his dining room table, naming the villains after the jobsworth managers who fired him. Although you could argue they did him a favour. In his new book, Reacher: The Stories Behind The Stories, he gives the background to the 24 novels he wrote solo. (The 25th was his first collaboration with Andrew Child, youngest of his three brothers; four more have followed). Unusually, rather than plan his plots in advance, he works around key points, making up the story as he goes – much like Miles Davis’s modal jazz, I suggest. “Yes! I know the mode! I’m improvising line by line, which really suits me. As a reader, I love the feeling that you can’t wait for what happens next. If I’d known exactly where the story was going, it’d be boring.” He recalls reading Ovid’s tale about Theseus and the minotaur at school, and reading Doctor No on the bus home. “It was the same story in every detail. That’s when I realised there aren’t that many plots, so it’s all about suspense and characters.” He didn’t think about how a book is constructed until he read a John D. MacDonald thriller at an airport in 1988. “I could see what he was doing and why. I could see the blueprint. It was an epiphany.”
Lee’s accent sounds as mangled as a villain’s kneecap after it has collided with the Reacher boot. “My accent was always screwed up. My tax collector dad was from Northern Ireland, my mum was a Geordie, and I lived in America for 30 years. They would have hated me sounding Brummie because they were so aspirational.”
Lee and his American wife Jane now live in the Lake District – “stunning and unchanged”. And closer to his beloved Aston Villa, where he now gets invited to the chairman’s suite. Daughter Ruth is still in Manhattan. He relaxes by smoking weed, reading, and listening to music. He owns guitars, including several Fenders, Gibson Les Pauls, and a vintage Martin – “I’m a terrible guitarist, but it’s a classic boomer thing.” In 2018, he recorded a Reacher album called Just The Clothes On My Back with Naked Blue duo Jen and Scott Smith. Lee received a CBE in 2019 from the then Prince Charles (as an egalitarian, he didn’t bow).
Reacher made the big screen in the 2012 with a 2016 sequel. The two films grossed £279 million. 5ft 7 Tom Cruise played 6ft 5 Jack. “I enjoyed working with Tom, but physically he was wrong for the role.” Alan Ritchson, at 6ft 3, is more convincing in Reacher, running on Prime since 2022, with a 4th season commissioned. Watch out for Lee’s cameos. “It beats the movies. A movie is 90minutes, an Amazon series is eight hours. You can tell the story better, develop the characters. You don’t have to compress the action. Alan is a joy to work with; a fun guy. And he works like crazy.” A spin-off series Neagley, based on Frances Neagley, Reacher’s oppo in his US Army Special Investigations unit, is coming.
Revenge is a constant theme. “I hate injustice. Most people are decent, most people like to help, but sometimes they can’t in the real world.” Avenging angel Reacher can. Lee grew up believing in a better tomorrow and bemoans the death of the postwar consensus, blaming the poisonous aspects of social media and the rise of political spin. Now officially retired, he still appears at literary festivals. “I go to make myself scared of the talent,” he laughs, adding “I like to support new authors. Men should read more women writers, women are great storytellers, look at Karin Slaughter.” Child has turned down two offers to take over writing Bond books. “The Fleming estate is very controlling, and why would I agree to a 50-50 split? Why would I accept that?” He’d once planned to kill off Reacher after 21 books. Recruiting Andrew kept him alive, but fans have been lukewarm about the collaborations. Will he ever come out of retirement to write a new Reacher story? “Never say never,” he says tantalisingly. “I appreciate taking a break.”
*Lee Child joins Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Miriam Margolyes, Rob Rinder, Shaun Usher, and Steph McGovern at the inaugural Whitby Lit Fest, 6-9 Nov. Book online: https://whitbylitfest.org.uk/
Lee Child’s new book Reacher: The Stories Behind The Stories is out now (Bantam, £16.99)