Booklist Review of In Plain Sight

Wilson, the Mob enforcer who appeared in Darwin’s Nightmare (2008) and Grinder (2009), is not a happy man. No surprise there—he’s always been a bit of a glass-half-empty kind of guy—but this time he has got a good reason. Some crooked cops are using him as a lure to nab some very bad people, and Wilson can think of only one way out of the predicament: to pit the cops and their prey against each other, letting them take each other out. Sounds like a good plan, but can he pull it off and somehow manage to stay alive? Knowles’ novels echo writers who have come before him—Richard Stark, for example, or Jim Thompson—but they’re not imitations. Wilson isn’t Stark’s Parker, and the author’s bare-bones prose doesn’t sound like Thompson’s. And the setting certainly freshens up the proceedings, too: you don’t see a lot of noirish crime dramas set in Hamilton, Ontario. For noir fans, a must-read. --David Pitt

Kind Words For In Plain Sight

“There's nothing prissy, genteel, or insincere in Mike Knowles' work — prose so spare it flirts with cruelty, that cuts scalpel-clean and just as precise, and crackles with the kind of talent and energy that not only makes it difficult to put down, but that sends you frantically looking for his next book. Hard-boiled, hard-edged, hard-core, but never once crossing into parody or pastiche. There is power here, and Knowles knows how to use it.”

— Greg Rucka, author of the Atticus Kodiak crime fiction series

“Think Canadian crime fiction is soft? Mike Knowles proves otherwise, in this tense, terse, bloody-knuckled thriller. Knowles doesn’t do “nice” and his antihero, Wilson, makes Mike Hammer look like a well-adjusted pacifist. In Plain Sight is a kick in the nuts with steel-toed boots.”

— Sean Chercover, author of Trigger City and Big City, Bad Blood

Publisher's Weekly Review of In Plain Sight

Canadian author Knowles's unsparing, blood-soaked third crime thriller to feature mob-enforcer Wilson picks up where the previous entry, Grinder, left off. Wilson wakes up handcuffed to a Hamilton, Ont., hospital bed, where the cops want to know who he is and why he was found lying in the street next to a homicide scene. In addition, the Russian mob and the Italian Mafia want him dead, but they've all underestimated Wilson, who has a knack for remaining invisible in a crowded room and of evading detection while in plain sight. Soon, Wilson slips into the streets of Hamilton, where he deftly plays the dirty cops against the mobsters. Gunfights and well-choreographed scenes of carnage abound. Wilson, who makes no pretense of which side of the law he's on, remains unburdened by quaint notions of redemption. This is pure, visceral action, reading more like an episode of a serial than a self-contained novel. (Sept.)

Booklist Review of Grinder

Canadian Knowles’ short, taut thriller is set on Prince Edward Island and in and around Toronto. Two years ago, Wilson barely survived a Mob shootout and escaped from Toronto with most people thinking he was dead. He recuperated and began to build a new life in a small fishing village on Prince Edward Island. Despite living off the grid, his past eventually catches up to him, and he’s drawn back to Toronto. Wilson doesn’t want to return to his old life, but he must complete one final task, finding out who kidnapped the foolish sons of the local Mob boss after they talked about Mob business on a series of YouTube videos. With lots of action and tension and plenty of dialogue, Wilson’s story moves along rapidly as he struggles to cut his ties to the past.

— Jessica Moyer

Hamilton Spectator Review of Grinder

Grinder, by Hamilton author Mike Knowles, is the second in a trilogy. It's loaded with compact, colourful writing that aims for that tiny spot between your eyes... a dead centre hit. Grinder is rich in blunt detail, a sharp lesson in economic completeness. Knowles makes his explosive point, moves forward and leaves your imagination reeling yet ready for more. Wilson is a grinder, someone who finds out everything. Bullets are among his chief assets. And he's very good at his job. In a few brief chapters bad boy Wilson recovers from serious bullet wounds, disappears along with $200,000, and surfaces on a boat off P.E.I. It's all vividly drawn and unpredictable. A Hamilton mobster's nephew is missing -- not a great loss and likely deserved. But it turns the mobster septic and Wilson returns to settle the mess. The grinder grinds--the guilty pay -- there are no innocents. Read Mike Knowles' first novel, Darwin's Nightmare, and now, Grinder. They are sharp, focused indications of a fine, new noir talent in our midst. Hang in there for the third.

Globe and Mail Review of Grinder

This is the second outing for Knowles – the first was Darwin's Nightmare – and his antihero, Wilson, is back, gone from his haunts in Hamilton and safely in hiding in B.C. He promised his old boss to get off the grid, and he has kept that promise. But then a man comes hunting for him – a man with a gun and a woman in the trunk of his car.

Knowles is working hard to take Wilson into the world of characters like Lee Child's Jack Reacher. He hasn't made it there yet, but there's hope. He's a good atmospheric writer and he has the lingo down, but it takes more than 178 pages to get into the kind of tough guy he's building. Book three may be the breakout.

Winnipeg Free Press Review of Grinder

Wilson, a guy with no first name, is The Grinder (ECW Press, $25, 220 pages), a ghostly underworld fixer who goes off the grid as a P.E.I. tuna fisherman to escape mob infighting in author Mike Knowles' native southern Ontario.

Unearthed by his über-nasty former boss and blackmailed with threats against his only friends, Wilson plows through a gaggle of underlings to find out who's grabbed the boss's gangster-wannabe nephews.

There's more mayhem than mystery in this thin sequel to Knowles' 2008 debut, Darwin's Nightmare, and Wilson flunks the sympathetic anti-hero test with his unrelieved brutality.

Still, Grinder displays some nascent storytelling chops and a viable future for the Hamilton schoolteacher.