Mike Knowles

About a year ago I picked up “Rocks Beat Paper” by this author. It was the first time I’d read his stuff & I was struck by his ability to create characters that live & breathe in your head from the moment you’re introduced. That continues in this dark & gritty tale.

Os, Woody & Dennis…3 cops who couldn’t be more different but must work together to solve the grisly murder of one of their own. When the body of colleague Julie Owen is found in her home, all 3 get the call. Os & Woody are partners & not happy about being saddled with Dennis, the precinct pariah. But a cop has been killed & that means all hands on deck.

It’s an atmospheric read that is not for the faint of heart. Noir-ish & leaning toward hardboiled, Knowles takes no prisoners. The prose is stylish but lean with just enough description to set the scenes. Yes, it’s hard core crime but what elevates it are the characters. As the story unfolds we learn about the MC’s & the secrets they’re struggling to hide. They have one thing in common. Although none of them knew Julie well, each has a deeply personal reason to avenge her death.

Os is a big, intimidating man of few words. Usually cool & focused, he’s like a coiled spring with tendencies barely held in check by his badge. But now Os is angry which means everyone else is scared. He’s an ill-fated figure shaped by his past & as the story progressed I got knots in my stomach as I just couldn’t see any way this could possibly end well for him. By coincidence I was reading “MacBeth” at the same time & couldn’t help thinking Os would have been right at home in Nesbo’s take on Shakespearean tragedy.

Woody has his own issues that he keeps at bay with a drug habit. He’s the chatty half of the partnership, a rumpled Columbo-like man who excels at interrogation while Os does the heavy lifting.

And then there’s Dennis, a legend in his own mind. He’s loud & never tires of regaling anyone who’ll listen of the cases he’s closed. He yearns for the old days when he could have been a cop like his father & resents the lack of respect from his colleagues.

These are your tin men….all badge & no heart on the job. But as we learn each has a trigger that threatens to release emotions that have been simmering below their professional facade. The search for Julie’s killer pushes all the right/wrong buttons, resulting in some shocking events before all the answers are delivered. If you’re looking for a story of redemption with an HEA, move along. Nothing to see here. But if you enjoy spending time on the dark side, give this a shot.… (mere)

In The Buffalo Job, the fifth effort by Mike Knowles in his Wilson series, Knowles shows he’s not growing soft, or even slightly sympathetic to Wilson, the former mob enforcer who just can’t quite get his life back together. Exhaustion, pain, mayhem and death travel with Wilson. Corpses and battered people litter the way behind him.

Wilson has a weak moment and finishes a job stealing a work of art for some young gangsters after they failed at the same job that he’d planned for them. One was a nephew to an Albanian mob boss, Pyrros Vogli. Vogli decides Wilson is hungry for work and “insists” that he manage a job for him stealing one of the rarest articles in the world, a Stradivarius violin that could soon be out of his reach.

Wilson has to assemble a crew in just a few days, babysit the mobster’s nephew as one of the crew, cross the Canadian/US border to Buffalo, and steal the violin either from a vault or a busy concert hall. While he concerns himself with the loyalty of his thrown-together crew, he also has to worry that the Albanian mob in Buffalo may find out he’s on their turf, or worse maybe trying to steal the violin too. What could go wrong?

Knowles propels his story forward with multi-dimensional characters, terse dialog, spare descriptions and unflinching violence. Scenes crackle with authenticity, as tense moments explode into ferocious action. Wilson is a protagonist who will make you cringe, even as you root for him to succeed.

Knowles has put a Canadian pin on the hardboiled crime fiction map. His dialog is reminiscent of Andrew Vachss, his brutality of Ken Bruen, and his plotting of Charlie Huston. Those are three pretty good reasons to read him if you like your crime fiction dark.
… (mere)

When someone uses the term “hardboiled”, you generally think of novels featuring a gritty PI who ponders the evil men do while saving a dame in distress. Wilson (no 1st name) in not a PI. He’s a thief. And his deep thoughts are reserved for planning a job. But hey, he makes a good living so if it ain’t broke…..

Wilson was invited to be part of a gang with plans to liberate a bag of uncut diamonds from a high end jeweller. But when their inside man suddenly died, so did the job. He wasn’t comfortable with the size of the crew anyway & decides to amend the plan & go for it. All he needs are 2 carefully selected partners: Miles (the conman) & Monica (the driver).

Good thing he’s a determined guy because although he doesn’t know it yet, there are others with the same idea. Stealing large sums of money can be tricky but diamonds are easier to move & hold their value. Or to quote Wilson, rocks beat paper. He, Miles & Monica put the scam in motion but have no idea what or who they’re up against.

This is a gritty, fast paced story that skates past noir to the hardboiled end of the genre. The lean narrative & sparse dialogue keep things moving as the plot zigs & zags in directions you never see coming. We spend most time with Wilson & his crew but there is a small peripheral cast that pops in & out of the story. The result is we’re never quite sure where the threat is coming from. Even as the bodies begin to fall, you may be surprised by who’s left standing at the end.

Most of the action occurs in New York’s meaner neighbourhoods lending a dark, brooding atmosphere to the story but everything revolves around Wilson. He’s an interesting guy. Smart, blunt & pragmatic, he’s a gun for hire who prefers to avoid any personal ties. He has the ability to assess the schematics of a job & find the weak spots. At the end of the day, he just wants to do a job & walk away a few dollars richer. If someone has to die for that to happen, well…such is life.

Don’t go into this expecting an MC who falls into the “charming rogue” category. He’s as unsentimental as it gets. But he’s also brutally honest about who & what he is. I enjoyed his clever scams & ability to quickly come up with a Plan B when necessary. Some characters in this genre can feel derivative but with Wilson, the author has created one that is original & distinct.

This is book #6 in the series & sure to be a hit with fans of cleverly plotted crime drama.… (mere)

I just read a clunker. The fifth installment in the Wilson series, an import from Canada. Wilson is a master thief. He's recruited by a bumbling, neophyte gangster, Ilir who tried to steal a painting and failed. Wilson, within days, steals the painting by creating a 'scavenger hunt' in the museum, causing overcrowding, masking the theft.

Ilir's uncle, Vogli, is the Torontonian head of the Albanian mob. Hearing of Wilson's swift success, he coerces Wilson to stead a Stradivarius from a Buffalo concert hall. The only catch: as part of the $800,000 deal, half up front, he must include Ilir on the team as Vogli's eyes and ears. They travel to Buffalo, plan the heist only to find that the Buffalo family of the Albanian mob also wants to steal the violin.

Of course, things go wrong all over the place.

In a 2009 interview, Mike Knowles, the author said "I have always been into pulp books and seventies crime fiction. Back then, there were a lot more books revolving around criminals and how they managed to survive living outside the law... What there weren’t enough of were the mean, pulpy, hard-boiled crime novels I read as a kid. I set out to write the kind of book it was getting harder to find. Wilson evolved out of the idea of a contemporary ronin. A lone man with no allegiances and many enemies. I always loved books where one man takes on all comers and manages to survive." This book is not hard boiled. It's not pulp. It's not gritty.

It's a poorly written, mundane book whose characters readers will not bond with, care about, etc. My suggestion? Steer clear of this book.… (mere)