Tin Men

March 5, 2018
Knowles (Rocks Beat Paper) takes a break from Wilson, the hard-edged antihero of his past six novels, and proves he can write police just as well as he can criminals. After Hamilton, Ont. Det. Julie Owen is gruesomely killed and her unborn child stolen from her womb, three cops who all have unspoken connections to Julie catch the case. Os Green is “the heavy: a blunt tool that could only follow a line if it was on the way to someone’s jaw.” His partner, “Woody” Woodward, can “probe a suspect for weaknesses and exploit them without crossing a single line,” but he’s hiding a drug addiction. And Dennis Hamlet, a cop both partners dislike, is hiding a sexual proclivity he is not entirely comfortable with. As the mystery travels a twisted path where “Not every cop is dirty, but the good ones are,” Knowles plays the procedural aspects of the story against his characters, expertly scrutinizing how their personalities and psychology affect how they approach their jobs. Knowles may slightly overplay the cynical nature of his world with its hardboiled dialogue, unflinching brutality, and casual misogyny, but overall the novel is a dark, effective story that should please fans of world-weary police procedurals such as Ed McBain’s classic 87th Precinct series.

February 1, 2018
Knowles takes a break from the chronicles of dead-eyed professional thief Wilson (Rocks Beat Paper, 2017, etc.) to shine a remorseless spotlight on three variously bent Canadian cops seeking justice for a fourth who's been gruesomely murdered.Detective Julie Owen's eight-month pregnancy ended when someone knocked her out, tied her to her own bedposts, cut her baby out of her belly, and left her to bleed out. DS Jerry Morgan, head of the homicide unit of Division 1 of the Hamilton Police, wants the case closed ASAP, so he puts three of his best detectives on it: Os, better known as the tin man because he's all shield and no heart; his partner, Charlie Woodward, better known as Woody, who's dealing with his own losses by bouncing between heroin and Adderall; and Dennis Hamlet, better known as a guy who closes cases even though Woody and Os want nothing to do with him, maybe because he's a lot less smart than he thinks. No sooner does Dennis interview Lisa O'Brien, the friend and neighbor who found Julie's body, then she's run down by a car as she crosses the street. Where will it end? Not with Dr. Kelsey, who doesn't want to say a word about the support group she ran for Julie, Lisa, and other bipolar patients; not with Julie's mother, Miranda Owen, whose Alzheimer's has stranded her in 1985 when Dennis goes to break the news of her daughter's death; not with Tony Nguyen, the Vietnamese-Canadian who runs the Yellow Circle gang, which Julie and her partner, Oscar Ramirez, had been investigating in the days before her death. In fact, the evidence seems to lead more and more conclusively to "a group of suspects all carrying badges."A memorably coldhearted case that offers abundant evidence for the grim proposition that "not every cop is dirty, but the good ones are."

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March 1, 2018
Knowles takes a break from his gritty Wilson series to tell an even grittier tale of three cops, each with his own secrets, who team up to investigate the death of one of their own. Detective Julie Owen is murdered; the crime scene is a bloody nightmare. Horribly, the deceased's unborn baby has been ripped from her and, apparently, spirited away by Owen's assailant. Woody, Os, and Dennis, the cops who form the central trio of this dark thriller, are all deeply damaged: Woody has a drug problem; Os can't seem to restrain his violent nature; and Dennis, well, nobody likes him. Knowles brings the same eye for detail in these new characters that has made the Wilson novels so popular, turning them from stereotypes into humanly flawed people. And the story is downright gripping, even when the darkness begins to feel overwhelming. Readers biding their time between novels by Dennis Lehane and Don Winslow should check out Knowles.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)