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RUNNING FROM THE DEAD by Mike Knowles Kirkus Star

RUNNING FROM THE DEAD

by Mike Knowles

Pub Date: June 2nd, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77041-519-5
Publisher: ECW Press

An Ontario private eye is given a week to find his path to redemption before the gates of hell close on him.

For six years, Sam Jones filled every spare hour hunting for Adam Verne, who’d disappeared from his mother’s home years before she hired Sam, demanding in return only a monthly update. When their latest meeting is only a week away, Sam’s search ends in a basement he flees, leaving behind two corpses, one virtually mummified, the other brand-new. Since he made inquiries of the neighbors before descending into the death chamber, he knows it won’t be long before Homicide Detective Scopes throws a lasso over him, but, certain that “knowing is worse than hope,” he still can’t bear to tell Ruth Verne what he’s found until he has no choice. As the hours tick down, a graffito in a coffee-shop washroom—“He’s going to kill me, and I think I want him too” [sic]—seems to offer his best shot at offsetting the crushing weight of his guilt. He resolves to find the young woman who left the message and do a better job rescuing her than he did rescuing Adam Verne. Against all odds, he does track down the lost soul with the help of barista Sheena and 80-year-old bank robber Willy Greene only to discover that she’s even more lost than he’d thought.

The noir world evoked by Knowles’ brutally clipped prose is so dark that the smallest victories seem like miracles.