City for Ransom

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A novel like City for Ransom does not get written in a vac-uum so much as a mineshaft. Thanks to an array of authors ahead of me, authors whose fascination with Chicago created a rich vein for a storyteller like myself to mine, City for Ransom, and its Dickensian ala Conan Doyle characterizations, came into being. My first novel, penned while I was a sophomore and junior in high school in Chicago, required research if I were to convey the inner workings of the famous Underground Railroad through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old Missouri boy ( Daniel & The Wrongway Railway, 1982). Since then, all forty-two novels I’ve seen through to publication have conveyed research, whether police proce-durals, suspense, young adult, even horror titles. To create City for Ransom and its sequels ( Vengeance for Ransom, Innocence for Ransom, and hopefully more) the author was led to the “Mother Lode” by Mr. Kenan Heise, author, historian, Tribune reporter, and owner of the sadly closed bookstore, the Chicago Book Exchange. Mr. Heise, who gave assistance to my hero, John Jakes, when Jakes needed to dig into Chicago history, told me where to sink my pickaxe for the best titles on Chicago during the years I wished to write about—Detective Alastair Ransom’s gaslight Chicago. The following $300 worth of books are by authors I must ac-326