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.