When the Killing Starts: A Reid Bennett Mystery

Reid Bennett, police chief of tiny Murphy's Harbour in Canada, is looking forward to a month's vacation. He plans to spend time with his girlfriend, Freda, and he might even get to go fishing with his dog, Sam. But then Norma Michaels, the wife of a rich businessman, turns up with a ＄25,000 offer: Find her twenty-year-old son, Jason. He has run off with some mercenaries to train for overseas service and she is afraid she has lost him forever. Even though he is of age, she wants him found, and she will pay handsomely. The mercenaries call themselves Freedom for Hire, and their leader is a cashiered sergeant from the British paratroopers who now styles himself Colonel George Dunphy. He was court-martialed for brutality, forced out of the service, and stands ready to brutalize a bunch of young men while stealing their pay. Since people like Dunphy annoy Reid, he decides to take the job-despite the minor risk of a few ex-SAS men with automatic weapons-but he is more worried that the boy will not want to come home when he is found. There are lots of questions to be answered when he and his German shepherd head north on the hunt for a few good (or maybe bad) men. "A series character worth watching for . . . fast moving, intriguing." -Los Angeles Times "Danger, full-bodied characters, and enough detail about police work and survival techniques to complement Bennett's role as the most savvy cop currently in the genre." -Library Journal Ted Wood has been a flier, a beat cop, a pinboy, a soda-jerk, a freight porter, and an advertising hotshot. He has also written dozens of short stories, hundreds of magazine articles, including two long-running humor columns, television plays and one musical comedy. He has had fourteen books, thirteen of them novels, published in Canada, the Unieted States, Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Japan. After being widowed, he married Mary in 1975. He is the father of three, stepfather to another three and granddad to a total of nine, counting steps and one step-step. He now runs Whitby's Ezra Annes House bed and breakfast in partnership with Mary. Jack Barnao is the pseudonym for Ted Wood, author of the acclaimed Reid Bennett mystery series. Barnao's novels are Lockestep, Hammerlocke, and Timelocke.

Ted Wood was born in Shoreham, Sussex, England. Throughout his life, he was a flier, a beat cop, a pin-boy, a soda-jerk, a freight porter, and an advertising hotshot. He also wrote dozens of short stories, hundreds of magazine articles, including two long-running humor columns, television plays, and one musical comedy. He had fourteen books, thirteen of them novels, published in Canada, the United States, Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Japan. Wood was the author of the acclaimed Reid Bennett mystery series. As Jack Barnao, he also wrote the John Locke Mysteries: Lockestep, Hammerlocke, and Timelocke.

After being widowed, he married his wife, Mary, in 1975. He was the father of three, stepfather to another three, and granddad to a total of nine, counting steps and one step-step. Wood ran Whitby’s Ezra Annes House bed and breakfast in partnership with Mary. He passed away in 2019.