Running from the Dead
A Crime Novel
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Critically acclaimed author Mike Knowles receives THREE STARRED REVIEWS with his newest crime novel
Private detective Sam Jones’s six-year search for an eight-year-old boy ends with gunshots in a basement and cold bodies that would eventually lead the police straight to him. Jones had never promised Ruth Verne that he would find her son alive, but he knew deep down that she believed he would — worse, he had believed it too. Jones wasn’t ready to look Ruth in the eye and tell her he had failed. He wasn’t ready to admit that he lost everything and had nothing to show for it.
But an unsigned note scrawled on a bathroom door gives Jones a second chance — a chance for redemption. Thirteen words left by a young girl in trouble give him someone to chase and a reason to keep moving before the cops move on him. Jones follows the trail from an idyllic small town to the darkest corners of the city, running from the boy he failed toward the girl he could still save.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Sam Jones used to be the private detective you called when all hope was lost. But six years into an obsessive search for a missing child, he’s crossed the line, becoming a rage-filled vigilante. With the clock ticking before he gets arrested, Jones embarks on a hunt for a missing teenager in an attempt to redeem himself. This thriller had our adrenaline pumping from the first page, but it also sparkles with witty dialogue and streaks of dark humour. The scene where Jones gets into a fight with an 80-year-old retirement home escapee inside a casino had us howling with laughter. With its inclusive, multiethnic downtown Toronto setting, Running from the Dead is an of-the-moment update of the hardboiled crime novel, a classic detective story with modern flair.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As PI Sam Jones, the hero of this brilliantly woven crime novel from Canadian author Knowles (Tin Men), is paying the cashier in a Toronto coffee house, he notices blood on his cuff and goes to the bathroom to try and remove the stain. On the back of the bathroom door he notices a message "written with a calligrapher's skill" in eyeliner that reads: "He is going to kill me, and I think I want him to." Having worked on an abduction case for six years and failed to stop his client's son's murder, Jones determines to locate and hopefully save the person who wrote the message. Meanwhile, another client wants Jones's help finding her father, who has disappeared from his assisted living facility. As Jones pursues the writer of the message and the missing father, he realizes it won't be long before the police start looking for him for a crime that slowly and enticingly comes into focus. The blood on his cuff is one tantalizing clue. The realistic, multidimensional characters evolve, as do their relationships with one another. With any luck, Jones will be back for an encore.
