FLYNN, Joseph

PERSONAL:

Born in Chicago, IL. Education: Attended Loyola University of Chicago and Northeastern Illinois University.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Bantam Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. E-mail—josephyflynn@josephflynn.com.

CAREER:

Writer. Worked variously as a copywriter at advertising agencies, including Foote, Cone, & Belding; J. Walter Thompson; Doyle, Dane, Bernbach; Ogilvy & Mather; and McCann-Erickson.

WRITINGS:

The Concrete Inquisition, Signet (New York, NY), 1993.

Digger, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1997.

The Next President, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Screenplay Comrades was optioned by Twentieth-Century Fox.

SIDELIGHTS:

Joseph Flynn grew up in a middle-class home in Chicago filled with siblings, aunts, uncles, parents, and grandparents. On his Web site Flynn states: "I grew up on the North Side, in the shadow of Wrigley Field, where I was a White Sox fan in the kingdom of the Cubs. This taught me from the start that I'd have to fight for my place in the world. It was great training for someone who wanted to make his living as a writer." Flynn began his career copywriting for ad agencies. He sold a screenplay that he was working on and began to work on writing novels. His first novel, The Concrete Inquisition, was published in 1993.

Flynn's second novel, Digger, is about John Fortunato, a Vietnam vetern who has secretly recreated the tunnels of Cu Chi underneath his hometown of Elk River, Illinois. Fortunato, now a photographer, witnesses and captures on film, a brutal killing in his neighborhood. The town is torn apart and erupts into a battlefield. Howard M. Kaplan, writing in the Denver Post, called Digger "a mystery cloaked as cleverly as (and perhaps better than) any John Grisham work, moves smoothly and swiftly." David Pitt, for Booklist, stated, "Digger is sure-footed, suspensful, and, in its breathless final moments, unexpectedly heartbreaking."

The Next President, is a thriller that takes place during the 2004 presidential election. There is an assassination plot against Franklin Delano Rawley, America's first black, major-party candidate. J. D. Cade is the assassin blackmailed into the task, but he does not know who is blackmailing him or why this person wants Rawley killed. Cade cannot bring himself to do it and instead tries to discover the identity of his blackmailer whom he plans to kill instead. A reviewer for Booklist stated, "Flynn is an excellent storyteller with a well-tuned ear for dialogue and a gift for creating memorable characters placed in believable settings."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August 19, 1997, David Pitt, review of Digger; May 15, 2000, review of The Next President, p. 1733.

Denver Post, July, 1997, Howard M. Kaplan, review of Digger.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1997, review of Digger.

Library Journal, July, 1997, Edwin B. Burgess, review of Digger, p. 124; April 15, 2000, Robert Conroy, review of The Next President, p. 122.

People, October 27, 1997, J.D. Reed, review of Digger, p. 1733.

Publishers Weekly, May 8, 2000, review of The Next President, p. 205.

ONLINE

Joseph Flynn Home Page,http://www.josephflynn.com (September 24, 2003).

Mystery Guide,http://www.mysteryguide.com/bkflynndigger.html (September 24, 2003), review of Digger. *