About the Author

Heather Martin met bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels, Lee Child, and asked why he enjoyed telling and hearing stories. His response was "If you want to really get to the bottom of it, you're going to have to write my biography." So she did! The Reacher Guy is a superb example of how to turn extensive research into an absorbing biography and is perfect reading for yet another lockdown. 

We are intrigued to ask Heather:

* What IS it really like to become the authorised biographer of one of the world's most read authors?
* How and where did her research begin?
* And what tips for writing a biography can she offer YOU as we chat live?

Heather Martin was born in West Australia and moved to London aged sixteen with the idea of becoming a musician. Four years of guitar-playing and a Venezuelan folk group later, she wound up reading languages at Cambridge instead. This led to lectureships in twentieth-century Spanish and Latin American literature first at Hull, then at King’s College London, and thence to a career in teaching, writing and translating. While researching her biography of Lee Child she was based for a year at the Department of Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center, City University New York.

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.