#TheReacherGuy – Everything Is Better With Dragons

The Reacher Guy:

The Authorised Biography of Lee Child

Heather Martin

Constable – 29^th September 2020 hardback £20.00 – also available as an eBook/audio

The definitive, authorised biography of

Lee Child

“Riveting . . . archival diligence . . . [Martin] is a skilled and audacious interlocutor, too, but her subject is just as adept as interviewee . . . starkly affecting” – Irish Times

The Reacher Guy is a life of bestselling superstar Lee Child, a portrait of the artist as a young man, refracted through the life of his fictional avatar, Jack Reacher. It tells the story of how the boy from Birmingham reinvented himself to become the strongest brand in publishing, selling over one hundred million books in more than forty different languages across the globe.

Heather Martin interviews friends, teachers, colleagues and neighbours, including agents and editors. Based primarily on her conversations with the author over a period of years, together with readings of his books and research in his literary archive, this authorised biography reveals the man behind the myth, tracing his origins back through the generations to Northern Ireland and County Durham, and following the trajectory of his extraordinary career via New York and Hollywood until the climactic moment when, in 2020, having written a continuous series of twenty-four books, he finally floats free of his fictional creation.

Lee Child comments: “I met Heather Martin some years ago, and we started talking about why people love telling and hearing stories. To get more depth and detail we started talking about why I do. Eventually I said, ‘If you want to really get to the bottom of it, you’re going to have to write my biography.’ So she did. It was a fun and illuminating process. I had forgotten a lot, and it was fascinating to be reminded. Now it all makes sense.”

“Vivid and entertaining . . . a must-buy for any aspiring novelist, thanks in particular to its terrific insight into how Child’s first book was written, rewritten, edited, sold and published.” – The Telegraph

“You’ll emerge from the first 300-odd pages knowing more about [Child’s] formative years that you do about your own.” – The Times