Stellar book, exactly what I would expect from Mike Knowles.
I'll be reviewing shortly on MurderInCommon.com

Sam's a private detective in Toronto who specializes in finding people. Unfortunately, he spent six years looking for Adam, a child, only to discover that there would be no happy ending. And he's sone something that will bring the law down on him as a result. He's on a quest, though, to find a girl he believes was abducted. Oh, and then there's Willy, an elderly man whose daughter is convinced he's come to a bad end. Sam's a hoot in spots but he's also a driven man with a big heart. I liked the setting (and there attention Knowles pays to small details). The characters are terrific- Sam's the guy you hope is on your side. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I'd not read Knowles before but I'm definitely going to look for him again.

Sam Jones is a private detective in Toronto, Ontario. For the last six years, he has been hired to find Adam, an eight-year-old who disappeared years earlier ... and he has met Adam's mother every month giving her reports. When Jones does find Adam, it's not the way he had hoped and he takes justice into his own hands. He figures he has about a week before the police connect him.

In the meantime, he finds a couple cryptic messages in a bathroom in a coffee shop and feels that it's from a girl in trouble. He couldn't save Adam so he's determine to find and save this girl ... and he knows he has less than a week to do it. Plus he's been hired to find Willy, the 80-year-old father of a woman who is used to getting her way. Jones thinks the old guy has just taken off for a couple days but the woman is concerned something has happened to him.

I've read a few of this author's books and have liked them. I liked the writing style ... it's written in first person perspective from Jones' point of view. As a head's up, there is swearing and violence.

I liked Jones ... he is on a mission and knows time is running out. He is straight to the point and no nonsense. Willy and Sheena, the barista at the coffee shop, were amusing and added humor to the story.

I'm assuming that this version of the book has been edited since it was posted on NetGalley. Jones was missing a hand but twice I noticed there was reference to him having "hands".

Free ARC from the GREAT folks at Net Galley allowed for this review

A broken nose and a straw, come on that alone is worth the price of admission.

Slowly, slowly does the tale begin but then it takes off with some really good hooks that kept me reading. I enjoy different and this one certainly was. You enjoy now!

“Running From The Dead” begins in a coffee shop where Sam Jones obsesses about every detail from what cup his coffee comes in to the graffiti on the bathroom wall. It is a slow methodical beginning. So detailed that you almost miss the grim details like the blood splatters on his sleeve and his missing arm. There’s a pace to this private eye story quite unusual for the genre.

And, indeed, it’s not really the private eye business that keeps Jones awake at night. When he gets a paying client, he frankly dismissed her concerns about her errant father. Perhaps that’s because Jones has bigger concerns like the missing child case he has been working painstakingly for 73 months, making monthly reports to the bereaved mother. Like the bloodstains on his sleeves that he washes in the coffee shop restroom. Like the hidden meanings and the faint cry for help he finds in the restroom graffiti.

For Sam Jones, it’s about saving someone and he slowly methodically keeps trying. Because there has gotta be some place closer to heaven than it is to Hell. He just hasn’t found it yet.

Interspersed with some comedic moments poking fun at the hardboiled craft of private eye work and ferreting out octogenarian bank robbers are some depth charges. Sam Jones is not exactly Mike Hammer and he’s not exactly innocent, but his posse of hardened tough guys is something different altogether.

This is an enjoyable read, but very different in feel from Tin Men. I’m not sure if the pace here will be for everyone, but it’s a different approach to what sometimes feels like a been-there-done-that genre.