Lee Child

Lee Child was born in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. He went to law school, but became a theater technician, and then a television director during British TV show "Golden Age". During his tenure his company made Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker, but was fired in 1995 at the age of 40 as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series, which went on to become a global best-selling franchise in 51 languages and 101 countries.