Jack Reacher author’s thrill at chairing crime-writing festival
LEE CHILD has been unveiled as the chairman of the world’s biggest crime-writing festival.
The Jack Reacher author – whose novels sell at a rate of one every nine seconds – will be programming chairman of the 2018 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate in July.
The festival, in its 16th year, is held at Agatha Christie’s haunt The Old Swan Hotel and features more than 90 bestselling crime authors. The Mail on Sunday is the official media partner for the festival’s Crime Novel of the Year Awards. The festival has previously hosted iconic names such as P. D. James, Jo Nesbo and J. K. Rowling (as her pennamed Robert Galbraith). Child, 63, who was born in Coventry but now lives in New York, launched his new Reacher thriller, The Midnight Line, last week. His previous book, Night School, was the UK’s biggest-selling hardback novel of 2016.
He said: ‘It’s a challenge to follow in the footsteps of authors such as Peter James, Val McDermid and Ann Cleeves as previous programming chairs, but I guarantee I’ll be bringing some very special names to 2018’s festival. Harrogate is by far my favourite on the circuit, so it is a real honour and delight to be taking the helm.’
Child won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2011 and received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award this year.