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London. May, 1556. Hal Westmecott, one of the city's most feared executioners, reckons Jack Blackjack owes him a favour - and now he's come to collect his dues. Hal has ordered Jack to track down his long-lost son and, although Jack believes he's been set an impossible task, he's in no position to refuse. But when Jack's search draws him to the attention of a ruthless nobleman, a dead priest's vengeful brother and finally to a bloodstained body in a filthy lodging house, he comes to realize he is an unwitting pawn in a mesh of schemes dreamed up by the most powerful people in England. Just who is a friend, who is a foe - and will Jack escape with his life intact? A fast-paced Tudor mystery set during Bloody Mary's reign of terror.
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
