A Few Days Away

Knighton’s brilliant second Nameless Thief crime novel (after Three Hours Past Midnight) opens with the unnamed narrator upside-down in a crashed car in a Pennsylvania creek, having just regained consciousness with a broken collarbone, and his partner in a bank robbery, Redfern, gone. Gunshots in the distance signal that someone has gunned down Redfern, setting the surviving robber on a quest for the $68,000 they stole. Four months later, the trail leads him to a crooked sheriff’s department employee, but when the thief breaks into the lawman’s home to search for the loot, he comes up empty. He then shifts gears to pursue other possible whereabouts of the stolen cash, one involving a corrupt bank president. When the narrator learns that the journalist handling the bank robbery story is also covering the home invasion murders of Francis and Denise Mahan, he suspects a connection and poses as an investigator for the Mahans’ insurer to get information. Superior prose matches the clever plot, which takes unpredictable but plausible detours. Lou Berney fans will be enthralled. (Oct.)