Running from the Dead

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. (June)