John Shannon is the author of the critically acclaimed  Jack Liffey detective novels, including The Concrete River (1996), The Cracked Earth (1999), The Orange Curtain (2001), Terminal Island (2004), and A Little Too Much (2011). He has also written a three-generation saga novel of the American Left — Socialist, Communist, New Left — called The Taking of the Waters, originally published by John Brown Books in 1994, and now available on Amazon as an eBook. www.jackliffey.com