Christopher Newman is a successful American author, best known for his Lt. Joe Dante series of novels. Born in San Francisco, California in 1952, Newman was educated in Bay Area Catholic schools and went on to attend the University of California at Santa Cruz and Birmingham University in England. He had a series of unique experiences in his youth, including traveling overland from Europe across the Asian subcontinent to Singapore alone in his late teens and working for a year aboard a tanker that traded between the Persian Gulf and ports around the Pacific rim. These experiences have likely provided much inspiration for his writing.
Newman's writing career took off after he moved to New York City at the age of 27. He worked as a trim carpenter for five years in Manhattan before publishing his first Joe Dante novel, Midtown South, in 1985. The novel was a commercial success, leading his publisher to convince him to turn his protagonist into a series character. Over the next several years, Newman published eight more Joe Dante novels, several of which made various national best seller lists. His novel Midtown North, published in 1991, was even nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
In addition to the Joe Dante series, Newman has also worked on other notable projects. He was commissioned to co-author a famous literary work of a notable author and completed the unfinished novel Chains of Command at the request of the estate of best-selling author William Caunitz. The novel was named a 1999 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Currently, Newman is working on a new series featuring Sean Malloy, a California-based former FBI profiler and Defense Department major crimes investigator turned medical cannabis advocate. The first novel in the series, THE FORCED HAND, is due for release in 2023.