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BLACKJACK: RANSOM OF FOR DEAD KING
Africa.
BLACKJACK, and his team take on a secret mission from a young ruler to prevent a bloody civil war.
To succeed they have to battle armed guards, starving alligators, and elite killers, while pursuing a treasure great enough to ransom a 1000 kings.
BLACKJACK, and his team take on a secret mission from a young ruler to prevent a bloody civil war.
To succeed they have to battle armed guards, starving alligators, and elite killers, while pursuing a treasure great enough to ransom a 1000 kings.
120 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2016
1 person is currently reading
About the author
Christopher Ryan
8 books13 followersI was born and raised in The Bronx, allergic to the planet. As a result I read, a lot. Comics, Bantam pulp novel reprints of The Shadow and Doc Savage, my brothers' school novels, my father's crime and war books, The Daily News, anything I could get my hands on.
I also delivered The Daily News, reading Jimmy Breslin's columns about the Son of Sam, and becoming sure that killer was in the staircases with me. Those papers were delivered fast indeed.
I went to Cardinal Spellman High School, but my friend Roger Ross gave me more reading assignments than the school ever did. Kerouac, Vonnegut, Adlous Huxley, Jim Carroll, and so many more.
And I studied music. Dylan, Yes, Neil Young, Genesis/Peter Gabriel, Pete Townshend, and dozens more.
It was all homework, as was the churning emotions of the changing neighborhood. I learned most of what I write about in those days.
I went to college to become a rock star, was told that loving music didn't make me a musician, and stumbled into the Journalism program. Before I knew it, I was back in The Bronx, covering crime and politics, which was often the same thing. Over about eight years, I won numerous awards, including the NYPA "best columnist" award. I also earned a "Journalist of the Year" award from Children Are Precious, for columns I did taking on the then-Bronx District Attorney for failing to get a sentencing on a child molester which resulted in that DA withdrawing from a re-election bid. I eventually covered the Crack Wars, which were so violent we ran body counts on the front pages of The Bronx Press-Review, on average around 12 dead and 27 wounded, mostly teenagers, every week.
I got to feeling guilty making my living off of dead adolescents, and believed I had to pay a karmic debt, so I applied to the NYPD. Between being accepted and entering the Police Academy, on a bet, I accepted an "emergency certification" as a teacher in a Bronx middle school, and suddenly found myself surrounded by living, not dead, kids. The change was exhilarating.
I never looked back, declining the NYPD and teaching five years in The Bronx and almost twenty in Hackensack, NJ.
After 16 years, I felt my karmic debt paid, and my creative writing skills really came alive. As my graduate "thesis" I wrote a 500-page draft of what would become, after much editing, my debut novel. It earned me the Rutgers University English Department Award for Highest Distinction in Literary Studies.
The result eventually became my debut novel, CITY OF WOE, which won the first ever "Book of Exceptional Quality" award from theBookcast.com and the Benjamin Franklin Gold Award from the Independent Book Publishers Association as the "Best New Voice in Fiction, 2013".
In answer to some reviewers wanting to see how my protagonists got their reputation for solving weird cases, I recently published CITY OF SIN, a short story collection prequel to CITY OF WOE.
Also in 2013, I published my first children's book, featuring an eight-year-old "detective" named Margaret Agnes Ferguson. This installment of THE FERGUSON FILES is subtitled THE MYSTERY SPOT, and there will be more to come.
But first, the sequel to CITY OF WOE is being written, to be called CITY OF PAIN, with a third to follow that.
ALSO in progress is a YA novel, PERFECT, about a very talented girl, as well as BULLETPROOF and THE UNWANTED.
Stay tuned...
I also delivered The Daily News, reading Jimmy Breslin's columns about the Son of Sam, and becoming sure that killer was in the staircases with me. Those papers were delivered fast indeed.
I went to Cardinal Spellman High School, but my friend Roger Ross gave me more reading assignments than the school ever did. Kerouac, Vonnegut, Adlous Huxley, Jim Carroll, and so many more.
And I studied music. Dylan, Yes, Neil Young, Genesis/Peter Gabriel, Pete Townshend, and dozens more.
It was all homework, as was the churning emotions of the changing neighborhood. I learned most of what I write about in those days.
I went to college to become a rock star, was told that loving music didn't make me a musician, and stumbled into the Journalism program. Before I knew it, I was back in The Bronx, covering crime and politics, which was often the same thing. Over about eight years, I won numerous awards, including the NYPA "best columnist" award. I also earned a "Journalist of the Year" award from Children Are Precious, for columns I did taking on the then-Bronx District Attorney for failing to get a sentencing on a child molester which resulted in that DA withdrawing from a re-election bid. I eventually covered the Crack Wars, which were so violent we ran body counts on the front pages of The Bronx Press-Review, on average around 12 dead and 27 wounded, mostly teenagers, every week.
I got to feeling guilty making my living off of dead adolescents, and believed I had to pay a karmic debt, so I applied to the NYPD. Between being accepted and entering the Police Academy, on a bet, I accepted an "emergency certification" as a teacher in a Bronx middle school, and suddenly found myself surrounded by living, not dead, kids. The change was exhilarating.
I never looked back, declining the NYPD and teaching five years in The Bronx and almost twenty in Hackensack, NJ.
After 16 years, I felt my karmic debt paid, and my creative writing skills really came alive. As my graduate "thesis" I wrote a 500-page draft of what would become, after much editing, my debut novel. It earned me the Rutgers University English Department Award for Highest Distinction in Literary Studies.
The result eventually became my debut novel, CITY OF WOE, which won the first ever "Book of Exceptional Quality" award from theBookcast.com and the Benjamin Franklin Gold Award from the Independent Book Publishers Association as the "Best New Voice in Fiction, 2013".
In answer to some reviewers wanting to see how my protagonists got their reputation for solving weird cases, I recently published CITY OF SIN, a short story collection prequel to CITY OF WOE.
Also in 2013, I published my first children's book, featuring an eight-year-old "detective" named Margaret Agnes Ferguson. This installment of THE FERGUSON FILES is subtitled THE MYSTERY SPOT, and there will be more to come.
But first, the sequel to CITY OF WOE is being written, to be called CITY OF PAIN, with a third to follow that.
ALSO in progress is a YA novel, PERFECT, about a very talented girl, as well as BULLETPROOF and THE UNWANTED.
Stay tuned...
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