About this item
August, 1556. Jack Blackjack is on a simple mission: make it back home to his beloved London. It should be simple, right? Wrong. He's made it as far as Exeter, but before he can secure a fresh steed in that hellish city, he's faced with a dead priest, ruthless thieves, and a devious Dean who's determined to see the back of Jack. That suits Jack just fine - he wants to leave!So when wealthy merchant Wolfe, offers passage to London via sea, Jack jumps at the chance . . . and unwittingly into further danger! With thieves, pirates and potential murderers at every turn who can Jack trust? Will he uncover the truth behind the dead priest and missing merchant ships? But more importantly, will he ever make it home to London with his purse strings and limbs intact? Set during the brief but exceedingly troubled reign of Queen Mary I, elder half-sister to the future Elizabeth I, (1553-1558) the Bloody Mary series features the amoral former cutpurse turned paid assassin, Jack Blackjack, as its cowardly, lecherous, yet strangely likeable amateur sleuth protagonist.
About the Author
NOTES: Everything About Michael JecksWho is this guy Jecks? Michael was a moderate student and early on, being a callow youth, decided on a career as an actuary. This decision was based solely on the fact that he heard it was the highest paid profession. Well, he had a father who was one, and a brother, too, but the money certainly helped.Not realizing that a standard definition of an actuary is "someone who finds accountancy too exciting", he achieved the relevant grades at A level and wandered off to City University, London. There, he excelled - as bar chairman - but not at actuarial studies. Firmly convinced that his course was incomprehensible (Life & Other Contingencies? Advanced Statistics? Programming in Pascal? ) and other parts were designed by knaves, cretins and the criminally insane (Economics) , he left the course after failing every exam for two years.With the glittering example of a second, unqualified, brother who earned very good money, had a bonus scheme, free car, free petrol, expense account and free holiday each year, Michael decided to follow this brother into computer sales.Joining one company selling "office automation" from the back of Gray's Inn Road (typewriters) , he soon progressed to a company selling personal computers. Especially the ACT Sirius. He left and set up a division of PC sales for City of London Computer Services, only to lose his job when a second partner, who didn't believe PCs would take off, returned from a long holiday. Following that, Michael went to a new start-up to help form Electronic Office Services. When that firm collapsed (with one director disappearing, apparently to the Bahamas with all the company's money) , Michael was left without a job. He saw an advert for an interview with a company called Wordplex, and went to see the company at an open day in a London hotel. After a lengthy interview process, which involved five formal meetings, he was accepted. Later he heard he had been taken on because he was "the only twenty-one year old I've ever seen turn up to a job interview smoking a pipe, you berk" - (Dick Houghton, Regional Director, Wordplex, 1981) .For the next four years, Michael sold Wordplex systems as one of a hundred salesmen in the UK. He was consistently one of the top salespeople in the country, and as a result was headhunted to join Wang Laboratories in 1985. Wang was a challenging company. All salespeople who did not achieve their monthly targets at least once in every three months were summarily dismissed. Michael survived until 1990, when Wang collapsed, and Michael took a job with Rank Xerox. This interesting job involved selling equipment that was roughly eight years out of date. There he lasted six months before being asked to join NBI, a Colorado-based firm created by ingesters of certain illegal substances, who (out of respect for the success of IBM, ICL, NCR and ACT) named their business: Nothing But Initial
