John Ridley was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1965. He is a multi-faceted talent in film, television, and publishing.
His critically acclaimed novel Stray Dogs was made into the movie U-Turn, directed by Oliver Stone. Ridley is also the author of several other highly regarded novels The Drift, Those Who Walk in Darkness, A Conversation with the Mann, Love is a Racket, Everybody Smokes in Hell, and Stray Dogs; and the graphic novel The American Way.
In addition, he is also a regular commentator for National Public Radio and a Blogger for the Huffington Post.
Red
Tails [2012]
Written By: Aaron McGruder, John Ridley
20th Century Fox
Rated PG-13,
Drama
Directed By: Anthony Hemingway
Cast: Terrence Howard,
Cuba Gooding Jr., Bryan
Cranston, Nate Parker, David
Oyelowo, Tristan Wilds, Method Man, Lee Tergesen, Ne-Yo, Elijah Kelley
Synopsis from Offical Website
1944. To help win the war, the Pentagon brass has no choice but to consider the untested African-American pilots of the experimental Tuskegee training program. Just as the young Tuskegee men are about to be shut down and shipped back home, they are given the ultimate chance to show their courage. These intrepid young airmen take to the skies to fight for their country - and the fate of the free world.
What
Fire Cannot Burn
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Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (January 1, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0446612030
ISBN-13: 978-0446612036
Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.9 x 6.8 inches
The bestselling author of "Those Who Walk in Darkness" delivers the second
book of his action-packed series, featuring top LAPD mutant-hunter Soledad
O'Roark, who teams up with rival Eddi Aoki when a vigilante starts killing
metanormals without mercy. Original.
Those
Who Walk in Darkness
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Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Aspect (May 1, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0446612022
ISBN-13: 978-0446612029
Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
Soledad "Bullet" O'Roark writes her own rules. Usually it gets her in
trouble. On her first day with the L.A.P.D.'s elite Mtac squad, Soledad
takes down an outlawed super-powered freak with a weapon she designed
herself-a definite violation. Her love life is no less chaotic. It's hard to
find a decent guy with nothing to hide. But there's not much room in
Soledad's life for romance when a cop-killer is on the loose. The "baddest"
freak of all, this one can control people's minds and make them commit
anything he wants... including murder.
Stray
Dogs
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Hardcover: 168 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (May 20, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345413458
ISBN-13: 978-0345413451
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
"It's the heat that makes you crazy. I don't know what it is, but it works
that way for man and animal alike. I've seen some peculiar things on a hot
day too. I've seen a scorpion sting itself to death. It just keeps drivin'
its tail into its body again and again. A little killer killing itself. And
what a man'll do on a hot day. A man could get his self killed just for
rubbing shoulders with another. . . ."
A loner, a drifter, a gambler--John Stewart asks little of life. But when
his '64 Mustang busts a radiator hose in the middle of the empty Nevada
desert, he prays to God, Buddha, L. Ron. And rolls into the tiny town of
Sierra. Where he finds . . . nothing. A gas station whose former owner is
lying low in the cemetery. A strip of barren, dust-blown store fronts. A
truck stop cafe with more flies than customers.
Stewart wants out. Sucker-punched in a rigged poker game, he's got to get to
Vegas to settle a debt. Or else.
Then in walks Grace, a seductive knockout who can read fortunes in faces. In
the next twenty-four hours, Stewart becomes ensnared in a web of dirty
double-crosses, cold propositions, and desperate souls--deadly ground where
murder is just one gasp away.
A stunning, fast-paced novel, Stray Dogs unfolds with unrelenting tension,
memorable characters, and shocking twists of plot. John Ridley has created a
hypnotic story that is pure noir, from its first page until its shattering
climax.
Conversation
with the Mann by John Ridley
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Format: Hardcover, 448pp.
ISBN: 0446528366
Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated
Pub. Date: June 2002
"What do you want?"
"I want the Ed Sullivan Show."
At the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, like a lot of black Americans,
comedian Jackie Mann wanted to be somebody. And for him there was only one way
to achieve that: to make it big. Make it, no matter the cost: friends, family,
one's own self-esteem and self-respect. This is the story of a young man's
journey from Harlem to stardom, a story
of Hollywood royalty, New York glitterati, Vegas Mafiosi, Northern bigotry, and Southern racism. This is a story of love, honor, betrayal, and redemption; of fame bought and paid for by any means necessary. It is the story of one man's desire and an entire race's demands, and the incredible moment when the two came together as one. This is the story of Jackie Mann.
The
Drift
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to order via
Amazon
ISBN: 0375411828
Format: Hardcover, 288pp
Pub. Date: September 2002
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
"He was Charles Harmon, a black man "living white" and living
well - beautiful wife, German car, big house - in an upper-upper-middle-class
suburb of Los Angeles." "He is Brain Nigger Charlie, a train tramp eking out a
ragged existence on the railroads, leaning on drugs to keep him from thinking
about everything he had, everything his creeping dementia has forced him to run
from." Charlie's been asked a desperate favor: find the seventeen-year-old niece
of the man who taught him how to survive the rails - a girl lost somewhere on
the High Line, the "corridors of racist hate" along the tracks of the Pacific
Northwest. Charlie has little hope of finding her alive, but the request is an
obligation he can't refuse. The search is a twisted trail that leads from Iowa
to Washington State, mixing lies and deceit, hate and hopelessness, and brutal,
stubbornly unsolved murders. All of which Charlie is prepared to meet in kind.
What he isn't prepared for is a path that will eventually lead him back to what
he thought no longer existed - his own humanity - though the toll may turn out
to be his life.
Related Links
The Negro-Cons' Deal with the Devil: Honorary White
Status in Return for Abandoning Fellow Blacks by
Lloyd Williams
In reaction to John Ridley's article in
December's Esquire Magazine; Kam Williams, shares his thoughts:
http://aalbc.com/reviews/thenegro-cons.htm
