Roger Jon Ellory is a British thriller writer. He was born in June 1965 in Birmingham, England.[1]
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RJ 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 some of the people who influenced his writing.[1] 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 been 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.
Beside reading a great deal of fiction, Ellory then pursued an intense study of philosophy, religion, psychoanalytic techniques, psychology, drug rehabilitation techniques and associated physiological and mental therapies, including the works of Socrates, Plato, Kant, Adler, Schopenhauer, Freud, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Gibran, Descartes, Dewey and Hubbard. He also studied the works of Guatama Shakyamuni, Guatama Siddartha, Krishnamurti, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the collected works of Carlos Castaneda, the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. He undertook courses in many aspects of these studies.
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.
His first novel to be accepted for publication, Candlemoth, was published in 2003 and was shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award in the same year. Ghostheart was published in 2004 and A Quiet Vendetta was published in 2005.
In August 2006, Ellory's fourth novel was released, entitled City of Lies, 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 released on 22 August 2007. Hailed as an epic accomplishment, 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 Richard & Judy 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 Crime Writing Prize 2008 and the Quebec Booksellers' Prize 2008.
It was also selected for the final shortlist for the Inaugural Prix Du Roman Noir Du Nouvel Observateur 2009, alongside Dennis Lehane, Don Winslow, Carl Hiaasen and James Lee Burke. On 31 March 2009, RJ Ellory won the award for the French publication of A Quiet Belief In Angels, entitled Seul Le Silence.[2]
Ellory's sixth book was released in October 2008, entitled A Simple Act of Violence (which went on to win Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year 2010), and his 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'.
His 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' will be released in May 2012.
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.
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.