Jack Barnao

Jack Barnao was the pseudonym of Ted Wood, author of the acclaimed Reid Bennett mystery series. He 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. Wood 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. 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.