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.)