City for Ransom

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

knowledge, most of which were sold to me by Mr. Heise, as most—like all great books—are out of print: Medicine in Chicago 1850–1950 by Thomas Neville Bonner; Reminiscences of Chicago During the Civil War, Citadel Books, Chicago by Finis Farr; The Gangs of Chicago by Herbert Asbury; Gem of the Prairie by Herbert Asbury; Chicago by Stephen Longstreet; Wicked City by Curt Johnson with R. Craig Sautter; Chicago by Lloyd Lewis and Henry Justin Smith; Chicago Ragtime by Richard Lindberg, Crime in Chicago by Richard Lindberg; German Chicago by Raymond Lohne; The Chicagoization of America by Kenan Heise; The Journey of Silas P. Bigelow by Kenan Heise; and Perfect Cities—Chicago Utopias by James Gilbert, Other titles I stumbled on and devoured for my understanding of the city where I grew up include The Pinkertons: The Detective Agency that Made History by James Horan; The Real World of Sherlock Holmes by Peter Costello; Chicago Then and Now by Elizabeth McNulty; Graveyards of Chicago by Matt Hucke and Ursula Bielski; Chicago’s Famous Buildings by Franz Schutze and Kevin Harrington; Chicago—A Pictorial History by Herman Kogan and Lloyd Wendt; Elmer McCurdy—The Misadventures in Life and Af-terlife of an American Outlaw by Mark Svenold; Forever Open, Clear and Free by Lois Wille; Central Michigan Avenue by Ellen Christensen; Man and the Beast Within by Benjamin Walker, and America by Alastair Cooke.

However, the book that sparked the initial idea for City for Ransom goes way back to the 80s for me (it’s been percolating for a long time). This title Dean R. Koontz insisted I read: Jurgen Thorwald’s Century of the Detective. Even then Inspector Alastair Ransom was roaming about inside my head looking for a way out while I spent decades with Jes-sica Coran in my popular Instinct Series and Lucas Stonecoat in my Edge Series.

Thanks also to the wonderful team at Avon/HarperCollins, especially copyeditor and detail-conscious Patrice