A Conversation With Lee Child
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robert_allen
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A Conversation With Lee Child
Internationally bestselling novelist Lee Child was
Photo of Lee Child
born in Coventry, England, in 1954, early enough to remember playing on left-over World War II bomb rubble, late enough to be young and impressionable through the Sixties. He went to law school, but took a job in commercial television after graduation.
"I always loved entertainment," he says. "At elementary school, I was always in the school plays. As a teenager, I worked in shoestring theaters and arts centers. I took vacation jobs anywhere there was a stage and an audience. I never intended to practice law. I did the degree because it was an interesting subject."
He joined Granada Television in Manchester, England, thinking the job would last a few months. He ended up staying nearly twenty years. He was there through the great era of British television drama, working on flagship shows like Brideshead Revisited, Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker.
"That was a wonderful, wonderful job," he says. "But eventually, twenty years is enough for anybody. And television is teamwork -- I felt I wanted to get away from that and get closer to the audience, personally."
So he made the decision to become a novelist after being caught in the industry-wide downsizing and layoffs. "I figured the novel is the purest form of entertainment, and certainly the closest I'd ever get to an audience ... after all, a writer is literally one-on-one with the reader for hours and hours at a time." In 1997, his first novel, the thriller Killing Floor (Putnam) was published to rave reviews. Killing Floor, introduced Child's immensely popular lead character, Jack Reacher. Reacher is an ex-MP, a loner who drifts from town to town, helping those in need of justice. Reacher is not an alcoholic, a drug addict or dysfunctional in any way, unlike many modern protagonists. Instead, he's more like a mysterious knight errant, riding into town, and serving up justice when and how its needed. And if a little violence is called for, it doesn't unduly upset him.
Killing Floor was followed by four more Jack Reacher books: Die Trying, Tripwire, Running Blind and his latest release, Echo Burning (Putnam), which all received critical acclaim and hit the bestseller lists. With an international audience, Child now sells one million books each year. In Echo Burning, Reacher meets a beautiful Latina named Carmen who tells Reacher that her abusive husband is going to kill her if she doesn't find someone to kill him first. So Reacher heads to South Texas to Carmen's ranch, which is seething with buried secrets, passion and danger. In a starred review, Kirkus calls Echo Burning "Smashingly suspenseful." Marilyn Stasio of The New York Times says of Child and his work, "His words are spare, but well chosen; the action is violent, but well calculated; and the ingenuity of the plot is especially well suited to a cool character like Reacher, who always thinks before he strikes."
Regards
removed/
Photo of Lee Child
born in Coventry, England, in 1954, early enough to remember playing on left-over World War II bomb rubble, late enough to be young and impressionable through the Sixties. He went to law school, but took a job in commercial television after graduation.
"I always loved entertainment," he says. "At elementary school, I was always in the school plays. As a teenager, I worked in shoestring theaters and arts centers. I took vacation jobs anywhere there was a stage and an audience. I never intended to practice law. I did the degree because it was an interesting subject."
He joined Granada Television in Manchester, England, thinking the job would last a few months. He ended up staying nearly twenty years. He was there through the great era of British television drama, working on flagship shows like Brideshead Revisited, Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker.
"That was a wonderful, wonderful job," he says. "But eventually, twenty years is enough for anybody. And television is teamwork -- I felt I wanted to get away from that and get closer to the audience, personally."
So he made the decision to become a novelist after being caught in the industry-wide downsizing and layoffs. "I figured the novel is the purest form of entertainment, and certainly the closest I'd ever get to an audience ... after all, a writer is literally one-on-one with the reader for hours and hours at a time." In 1997, his first novel, the thriller Killing Floor (Putnam) was published to rave reviews. Killing Floor, introduced Child's immensely popular lead character, Jack Reacher. Reacher is an ex-MP, a loner who drifts from town to town, helping those in need of justice. Reacher is not an alcoholic, a drug addict or dysfunctional in any way, unlike many modern protagonists. Instead, he's more like a mysterious knight errant, riding into town, and serving up justice when and how its needed. And if a little violence is called for, it doesn't unduly upset him.
Killing Floor was followed by four more Jack Reacher books: Die Trying, Tripwire, Running Blind and his latest release, Echo Burning (Putnam), which all received critical acclaim and hit the bestseller lists. With an international audience, Child now sells one million books each year. In Echo Burning, Reacher meets a beautiful Latina named Carmen who tells Reacher that her abusive husband is going to kill her if she doesn't find someone to kill him first. So Reacher heads to South Texas to Carmen's ranch, which is seething with buried secrets, passion and danger. In a starred review, Kirkus calls Echo Burning "Smashingly suspenseful." Marilyn Stasio of The New York Times says of Child and his work, "His words are spare, but well chosen; the action is violent, but well calculated; and the ingenuity of the plot is especially well suited to a cool character like Reacher, who always thinks before he strikes."
Regards
removed/
