Jack Clark: 8 books

"Jack Clark's wondrous celebration of his working-class mother and her natural gifts as a storyteller has touched me deeply.             "Hooray for Mary Jo Ryan Clark and her boy Jack." --Studs Terkel "The book itself is a marvel of writerly restraint......

Chicago private eye Nick Acropolis is back with a new adventure. Billy Mansfield has been on Death Row for more than 20 years, and Nick helped put him there in his days as a Chicago homicide detective. Now he's asked to find evidence to free him. Could Billy Mansfield really be innocent?  "Westerfield's...

Chicago private detective Nick Acropolis goes to rural McKinley, Illinois--a town along the old and legendary Route 66--to investigate the case of Jesse Lopez, a truck driver charged with smuggling drugs. Nick meets truck stop waitress Maddy Miller. Her teenage son Billy has been missing for over...

Meet Chicago Cabbie Eddie Miles  “From the driver’s seat of his cab, Eddie negotiates a city splintered by race and class and rapidly losing its economic underpinnings. ​**Nobody’s Angel has the wry humor and engaging characters typical of the best of the hard-boiled genre, but Clark’s...

When Mary Jo Clark died at age 90, she left behind a library that nobody knew existed. In the back of a desk drawer, and in a sealed carton, her  children found seven desk calendars, chronicling the years1937 to 1943. On  thousands of three by four inch pages, Mary Jo tells the story of her young  adulthood....

These 17 stories first appeared in the Chicago Reader. From the Back Cover: The center of attention is a young man with at least twenty stab wounds in his chest. He looks scared all right, but even more than that he looks poor. Dressed in the clothes they died in, they all look poor...

Eddie Miles is a Chicago cabdriver who spends most of his waking hours behind the wheel of his night-shift taxi. His only friends are a small circle of fellow cabbies. He lost his wife to divorce years ago, and the right to see his nine year old daughter, Laura. They then moved 2000 miles away to...

 “Westerfield’s Chain,” was first published by St. Martin's in 2002, and was a Shamus Award Finalist.  KirkusReviews said: "When someone asks ex–homicide cop Nick Acropolis if he misses being on the job, he replies, “Every fucking day,” acknowledging a painful truth. He misses...