American writer Lincoln Child: biography, best books and reviews

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:46

The horror genre has long and firmly taken root not only in literature and cinema, but also in the hearts of numerous thrill-seekers. One of the brightest representatives of the "mystical horror" direction is the American writer Lincoln Child. "The Forgotten Room", "Ice-15", "Utopia", "Relic", "Still Life with Crows" are exciting action-packed novels that you can't stop reading. The release of each new book by this author is an expected event, the circulation is swept off the shelves in a matter of days. The Relic novel has long since become a successful film adaptation, grossing $33 million in the US alone.

Despite his wide popularity, there is very little information about the biography and personal life of the writer, and what is there is fragmentary. To correct this injustice, we decided to tell readers about this talented author.

Biography, beginning

Creator of exciting mystical horror writer Lincoln Child was born in Connecticut in 1957. Still in primaryAt school, Lincoln found that letters and the words they formed had a strange attraction to him, and in the second grade he wrote a short story, Bumble the Elephant, which was never published and was eventually lost.

School years, although they were fruitful for Child for several dozen short stories, and even a fantasy novel, remained in his memories as hysterical outbursts of self-doubt and a fair amount of embarrassment from the quality of his own works.

At the end of school, a strange craving to put letters into words only got stronger, and in 1975 Lincoln left for Minnesota to enter the department of English literature at Carlton College, where he was repeatedly noted by teachers as a very talented student. Lincoln Child College graduated with honors in 1979.

Editor

After graduating from an educational institution, the young man went to New York, where in five years he went from assistant to editor-in-chief of St. Martin's Press, while compiling collections of ghost stories in parallel, some of them (Dark Company and Dark Banquet) even came out in hardcover in 1984 and 1985.

By the end of 1985, Lincoln Child organized a special division in the publishing house, dealing with literature of the mystical direction, which he led for the next two years. During this time, three volumes of the Tales of the Dark collection and several other works for fans of the horror genre were published.

System Analyst

BIn 1987, the writer's fate takes an unexpected turn, and he leaves the publishing business, remembering his second youthful passion - programming and systems analysis.

About a decade working at MetLife as a programmer did not bring Child satisfaction, but allowed him to create and publish in collaboration with Douglas Preston "Relic", which became the first novel of a long joint project. After completing the book in 1995, Lincoln Child went free-swimming and has been steadily improving his writing skills ever since.

Great tandem

Child's twenty years of creative activity have produced six novels, each of which is eagerly awaited by readers all over the world. But the most widely known writer brought books written in collaboration.

The acquaintance with Douglas Preston took place in the late eighties, when, while still collaborating with the publishing house, Child edited the first book of the budding writer and historian, called Dinosaurs in the Attic. In the early 1990s, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child formed a team that brought the Alois Pendergast series to enthusiastic readers.

FBI Agent Alois Pendergast

In 1995, the first novel of the series, "The Relic", was released, subsequently successfully filmed. In the center of the plot is a museum piece brought by a young explorer from the jungles of South America to the New York Museum of Natural History, and a series of mysterious bloody murders that occurred in his wake.fault.

The book turned out to be a little raw, but very exciting and entered the top 40 best works in the genre of literary horror, compiled by the Horror Writers Association of America.

Over the next twenty years, the Alois Pendergast cycle was replenished with fifteen novels, during which the brave FBI agent descended into the underworld of New York ("Reliquary"), investigated the murder of a black archaeologist in a quiet town in the Midwest ("Still Life with crows"), visited a Buddhist monastery ("Wheel of Darkness"), caught an arsonist at a ski resort in Colorado ("White Fire"), and performed many other equally noble and courageous deeds.

All books in the series are distinguished by a twisted plot, dynamism and completeness of storylines. Some of the novels smack of Conan Doyle, but the series as a whole has been lauded.

Gideon Crewe

In 2011, Child and Preston presented a new cycle of novels to the attention of readers, the main character of which was a young engineer, and part-time brilliant hacker Gideon Crewe, who became a secret agent. In the first book in the series, a charming intelligence agent investigates the murder of a Chinese physicist who was supposed to be paid for stolen secret blueprints.

Like the previous project, the Gideon Crewe books were enthusiastically received by English-speaking readers and critics, and at the moment the series has four novels, of which only one has been translated into Russian.

Singleswimming

Parallel to co-authoring two exciting series with Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child released his first solo book, Utopia, in 2002. On its pages, the author, with his characteristic deep immersion in technical details, described an amusement park that has four magical worlds filled with exotic attractions. Visiting attractions allows visitors to test their endurance and strength, show dexterity and attention. A group of terrorists suddenly appearing on the territory begins a series of bloody sophisticated murders in order to get the technological secret of the park.

In 2007, Child wrote the first novel of his own series called From the Deep. The hero of the book is an enigmatologist, Professor Jeremy Logan, who brilliantly unravels the mysterious, sometimes mystical crimes, into the world of which Lincoln Child immersed his heroes. The author's books quickly gained popularity and stood on a par with the most sought-after horror novels.

To date, the series has four action-packed mystical thrillers.

Secrets of the Forgotten Room

The latest Jeremy Logan book to date published by Lincoln Child is The Forgotten Room. The sixth book, created without the involvement of a co-author, received many positive reviews and, according to readers, fully met their expectations. Fans of intricate mysteries, terrible secrets and secret organizations will appreciate the inexplicable plot twists.

At the Lux Centermysterious investigations for private clients, a suicide occurred. The scientist who committed suicide was considered one of the most psychologically stable workers, had extensive plans for life and many reasons to be proud of himself. It seemed all the more strange that shortly before the tragedy he behaved inappropriately, heard voices and showed aggression towards colleagues and friends.

Jeremy Logan, a former employee, historian, addicted to the paranormal and famous as a ghost hunter, was invited to the center to investigate the tragedy.

The investigation leads Logan to the west wing of the research center building, formerly owned by an eccentric millionaire. There he discovers a room without windows, and in it - a strange machine of unknown purpose, controlled from the outside.

Slow weekdays

Lincoln Child, whose biography is full of unexpected twists, is a very versatile person by nature. In the sphere of his interests are at the same time poetry created before the fifties of the twentieth century, and literature of the same period; playing music on various instruments, from the conventional piano to the five-string banjo and digital devices; history of America and England; motorcycles and exotic parrots; Italian costumes; butterflies and hiking in the mountains; archeology; felt hats; non-traditional programming languages and rhythm and blues…

Currently, Lincoln Child, whose books are sold in millions of copies daily, lives in the northeastern United States, in the state of New Jersey,with his wife and daughter. In his spare time, he reads John Keats, listens to Beethoven and Brahms, and collects Chateau d'Yquem.