Heather Martin – The Reacher Guy (The Authorised Biography of Lee Child)

Who wouldn’t want to read this book? If you are at all a fan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series this book is almost a must read! I was lucky enough to win a copy of this book and then I was invited on this tour, it was a  foregone conclusion I would join in. First let’s check out the synopsis.

Jack Reacher is only the second of Jim Grant’s great fictional characters: the first is Lee Child himself. Heather Martin’s biography tells the story of all three.

Lee Child is the enigmatic powerhouse behind the bestselling Jack Reacher novels. With millions of devoted fans across the globe, and over a hundred million copies of his books sold in more than forty languages, he is that rarity, a writer who is lauded by critics and revered by readers. And yet curiously little has been written about the man himself.

The Reacher Guy is a compelling and authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, refracted through the life of his fictional avatar, Jack Reacher. Through parallels drawn between Child and his literary creation, it tells the story of how a boy from Birmingham with a ferocious appetite for reading grew up to become a high-flying TV executive, before coming full circle and establishing himself as the strongest brand in publishing.

Heather Martin explores Child’s lifelong fascination with America, and shows how the Reacher novels fed and fuelled this obsession, shedding light on the opaque process of publishing a novel along the way. Drawing on her conversations and correspondence with Child over a number of years, as well as interviews with his friends, teachers and colleagues, she forensically pieces together his life, traversing 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 breaks free of his fictional creation.

I have been a fan of Lee Child’s for years. His Jack Reacher series has entertained me  no matter which book I have been reading at the time. The chance to take part in this tour is definitely an honour. He is one of the most successful authors today and I couldn’t wait to delve into the man behind the books.

A book that proves to be a fascinating insight into Lee Child. Just the fact that he wasn’t born Lee Child but James Grant, gave me one of those ‘ahhh’ moments. This is a man that has successfully created a new persona that he lives as well as his book characters shows us his creative excellence.

At around 500 pages this is a beautifully written book, Heather Martin has created a biography that is more than facts and figures. The fact that Lee Child  has authorised this book means we, as readers, get to ‘hear his voice’ throughout. These two authors closeness is obvious as the book unfolds. This closeness has allowed Lee Child to really open up and be comfortable honest about his background. I really felt like they were having a conversation and I was sat watching. This creates a warm tone to the book which is usually missing in some biographies.

All in all, this is such an amazing, immersive and interesting read that the pages flew by and it didn’t take as long as I thought it would to read. Thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for my place on the tour today

About the author

Heather Martin was born in West Australia. She grew up in Aix-en-Provence, Paris, and Perth, where she would fall asleep to the sound of the Indian Ocean. She left Australia for England to become a classical guitarist but found herself singing with a Venezuelan folk group and learning to speak Spanish instead. She read Languages at Cambridge, where she also did a PhD in comparative literature, and has held teaching and research positions at Cambridge, Hull, King’s College London, and most recently, the Graduate Center, City University New York. Heather is a long-time Reacher fan. While waiting to get her hands on the next in the series, she once read a Lee Child book in Spanish and wound up writing to the author about the fate of his character in translation. The Reacher Guy is her first biography.