1. Jack Ritchie completed one novel shortly before his death; it was published posthumously in 1987.
19 Facts About Jack Ritchie
1. 2.
Jack Ritchie was born in a room behind his father's tailor shop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 26,1922.
3.
Bill, Jack Ritchie worked for a time in his father's shop.
4.
Not wishing to pursue a tailor's career, Jack Ritchie decided to try writing stories for a living.
5.
Ritchie's mother, Irma Reitci, wrote short stories and she introduced him to a literary agent, Larry Sternig, to whom Jack gave a copy of a story he had just written.
6.
Sternig recognised Jack Ritchie's writing ability at once and sold the story, "Always the Season", to the New York Daily News in 1953.
7.
Jack Ritchie was introduced by Sternig to a fellow writer, Rita Krohne at a New Years Eve party; they were married in 1954.
8.
The couple made their living from the combined income of their freelance writing, though Jack Ritchie stated that they never collaborated on any of their stories.
9.
Jack Ritchie moved to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin after he and his wife divorced in 1978.
10.
Jack Ritchie was an avid reader of non-fiction books and had a particular interest in history.
11.
Jack Ritchie was a fan of word puzzles and did the crossword in the Milwaukee Journal religiously.
12.
Shortly after completing his only novel, Tiger Island, Jack Ritchie died of a heart attack at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Milwaukee.
13.
Jack Ritchie was given a private, military funeral in Milwaukee on April 27,1983.
14.
Jack Ritchie was a prolific writer of short stories, published in an extraordinary variety of periodicals and newspapers.
15.
Jack Ritchie's first published story was "Always the Season", which ran in the December 29,1953 issue of the New York Daily News.
16.
Jack Ritchie contributed several "hard-boiled" detective and crime fiction stories to Manhunt magazine throughout the 1950s; other stories appeared in such diverse publications as The Philadelphia Inquirer, Stag, New York Daily Mirror, Smashing Detective Stories, and Good Housekeeping.
17.
For Boys' Life, Jack Ritchie regularly wrote stories about comic interactions with exchange students from Liechtenstein, set at fictional Robert Louis Stevenson High School in Wisconsin.
18.
Jack Ritchie was a lifelong member of the Council for Wisconsin Writers, from which he won three awards for his short fiction.
19.
Several prominent editors and authors in the mystery field who have praised Ritchie include Alfred Hitchcock, Donald E Westlake, Anthony Boucher, Francis M Nevins, Jr.