R. J. Ellory

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Ellory in 2012.

Roger Jon Ellory is a British thriller writer. He was born in June 1965 in Birmingham, England.

Personal life

R. J. Ellory is an author who lives in Birmingham in the United Kingdom. He cites Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Moorcock, J. R. R. Tolkien and Stephen King as being among the people who influenced his writing. He is an avid fan of BookCrossing and apart from his work as an author, he is interested in music. He is currently a singer and guitar player with a band called The Whiskey Poets.

Ellory's father is unknown to him, having left the household before Ellory was born. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother, his maternal grandfather having drowned in 1957 in Wales. Ellory's mother died as a result of a pneumonic haemorrhage in late 1971, the victim of a pneumonia epidemic that killed a number of people in the West Midlands. Ellory was then sent to a number of different schools, and finally completed his education at Kingham Hill School in Oxfordshire, a school established by the Barings-Young banking family as a facility for "wayward and orphaned children".

Leaving this school at 16, Ellory returned to Birmingham where he pursued a diploma in graphic art and design at Bournville College of Art. After one year, Ellory's maternal grandmother died in April 1982 and Ellory dropped out of college, failing to secure any qualifications.

Ellory started writing in late 1987 and over the subsequent six years completed twenty-two novels, all of which were rejected by numerous publishers, both in the United Kingdom and the United States. He was told repeatedly that it was not commercially viable for a British writer to expect publication of novels set in America. Ellory stopped writing for eight years, but then resumed in late 2001, citing as his motivation a quote from Benjamin Disraeli that "Success is entirely dependent upon constancy of purpose. He then penned a further three novels, the second of which was Candlemoth. This was accepted for publication in June 2002 by Orion Publishing Group and published in July 2003. It was also translated into German, Dutch and Italian. Ellory has gone on to publish a novel in each subsequent year, and his books are now available in more than twenty-five languages.

Controversy

According to the Daily Telegraph and The New York Times, Ellory has used fake usernames to write glowing reviews of his own works at Amazon.com, while writing bad reviews of other authors' books. Using one of his pseudonyms, "Nicodemus Jones", Ellory described his novel "A Quiet Belief in Angels" as a "modern masterpiece". The review on Amazon reads: "All I will say is that there are paragraphs and chapters that just stopped me dead in my tracks . . . it really is a magnificent book". In addition to praising his own work, he left negative reviews for books by novelists Stuart MacBride and Mark Billingham.

Published works

His first novel to be accepted for publication, Candlemoth, was published in 2003 and was shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award that same year. Ghostheart was published in 2004 and A Quiet Vendetta in 2005.

In August 2006, Ellory's fourth novel City of Lies was released, and in the early part of 2007 it was shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger for Best Thriller.

Ellory's fifth novel A Quiet Belief In Angels was published on 22 August 2007. It garnered the following quote from fellow crime fiction author Michael Connelly: "A Quiet Belief In Angels is a beautiful and haunting book. This is a tour-de-force from RJ Ellory."

A Quiet Belief In Angels was selected as one of the titles in the Richard & Judy Bookclub 2008. This was officially announced on 27 December 2007, and Ellory's book was reviewed on the Channel 4 Richard & Judy Show on 30 January 2008. The additional advertising and promotion associated with the show's shortlist introduced Ellory's work to a far wider audience.

A Quiet Belief In Angels has sold in excess of 1,000,000 copies since its release, and has also been purchased for translation into a total of twenty-three languages including French, Japanese, Norwegian, Lithuanian and Brazilian Portuguese. It was ranked third in the Sunday Times bestselling book list in the week of its review on TV. It was shortlisted for the Barry Award for best British crime fiction 2008, the 7th Prix Du Polar Européen 2008 of the weekly French magazine Le Point, 'Le Nouvel Observateur′s Crime Writing Prize 2008, and the Quebec Booksellers' Prize 2008. It won the Strand Magazine Thriller of the Year. It was also selected for the final shortlist of the Nouvel Observateur's inaugural Prix du Roman Noir in 2009, alongside Dennis Lehane, Don Winslow, Carl Hiaasen and James Lee Burke. On 31 March 2009, Ellory won the award for the French publication of A Quiet Belief In Angels, entitled Seul Le Silence.

In October 2008 Ellory's sixth book was released, entitled A Simple Act of Violence; it went on to win Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year 2010. Ellory's seventh book, The Anniversary Man, was released on 3 September 2009. He has recently completed the screenplay for A Quiet Belief In Angels, commissioned by Olivier Dahan, Oscar-winning writer/director of La Vie en Rose.

Ellory's eighth UK publication, Saints of New York, was released in September 2010; his ninth, Bad Signs, in October 2011; and his tenth, A Dark and Broken Heart, in May 2012.

Between March and April 2012, Ellory released a trilogy of novellas making up the ebook-exclusive Three Days in Chicagoland, focusing on the brutal murder of a young girl in Chicago in 1956, as told from three different viewpoints: The Sister, The Cop and The Killer.

Ellory's eleventh title, The Devil and the River, a 1974 murder investigation by a Mississippi smalltown sheriff and Vietnam veteran, John Gaines, will be released in 2013.

Awards

In 2003, Ellory's debut novel Candlemoth was shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger for Best Thriller. This followed with his fourth book City of Lies being shortlisted for the same award in 2006.

A Quiet Belief in Angels, his fifth title, was shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction 2008. The novel was also shortlisted for the Association 813 Trophy, the 7th Prix Du Polar Europeen Du Point, the Mystery Booksellers of America Dilys Award, the Southern Independent Booksellers' Award 2010 and the Prix des Libraires Du Quebec Laureat 2009. It went on to win the Inaugural Roman Noir Nouvel Observateur Prize in 2008, the Best Thriller 2009 by New York's Strand Magazine, along with the Livre De Poche Award and the USA National Indie Excellence Award for Best Mystery, both in 2010.

In the same year, A Quiet Vendetta won the Prix Des Libraires Du Quebec Laureat. Additionally, it won the Villenueve les Avignon Literary Festival Readers' Prize in 2010 and the St. Maur Prix Polar in 2011.

A Simple Act of Violence was shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction 2009 and won the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award for 2010.

Works

• Candlemoth (2003) ISBN 0-7528-5666-9
• Ghostheart (2004) ISBN 0-7528-6059-3
• A Quiet Vendetta (2005) ISBN 0-7528-6060-7
• City of Lies (2006) ISBN 0-7528-7366-0
• A Quiet Belief in Angels (2007) ISBN 978-0-7528-7369-5
• A Simple Act of Violence (2008) ISBN 978-0-7528-9190-3
• The Anniversary Man (2009) ISBN 0-7528-9874-4
• Saints of New York (2010) ISBN 978-1-4091-0474-2
• Bad Signs (2011) ISBN 978-1-4091-0476-6
• A Dark and Broken Heart (2012) ISBN 978-1-4091-2414-6
• The Devil and the River (2013) ISBN 978-1-4091-2417-7

External links

• Official website
• Shots Crime and Thriller Ezine: ROGER JON ELLORY on A Quiet Vendetta (2005)
• Shots Crime and Thriller Ezine: An interview with Roger Jon Ellory.
• La Clé des Langues: Ellory on crime stories
• New York Times Bits: His Biggest Fan Was Himself