R. J. Ellory

Roger Jon Ellory (born 20 June 1965) is an English thriller writer. Ellory lives in Birmingham, England. He cites Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Moorcock, J. R. R. Tolkien and Stephen King as 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 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