From Childhood Struggles to Storytelling

How a Birmingham boy became best-selling thriller writer, Lee Child, and the creator of one of the literary world's most popular loners. (R)

James Grant grew up in Birmingham when it was a bustling industrial city.

While huge workforces would pour of the factories as men ended their shifts and headed home on bicycles, for children, there wasn't much to do.

Young James often found himself at the library, and he grew up a voracious reader.

He began working for Granada Television after leaving university, but after a 20-year career, Jim suddenly found himself out of a job, and with a wife and child to support.

With a pragmatic sense of mission, he sat down with a pencil and wrote his first novel in longhand, under the pseudonym Lee Child.

It was a thriller about a loner named Jack Reacher, and went on to become a best-seller around the world, adapted into films and a television series.

Now every nine seconds, somewhere in the world, someone buys a Jack Reacher book.

This episode of Conversations explores crime writing, stories, thrillers, Jack Reacher, In Too Deep, television adaptations, Lee Child's real name, origin stories, Birmingham, books, authors, best-selling books, book recommendations, Tom Cruise, Netflix, Amazon Prime, film adaption, Hollywood, Bill Clinton.